UCSC Currents online

Front Page
Awards and Honors
Classified Ads
Publications
UCSC in the News

Page Contents:

Martín Abadi named to Microsoft advisory board for security issues

James Kent to receive Overton Prize for computational biology

 

March 17, 2003

Awards and Honors

Martín Abadi named to Microsoft advisory board for security issues

Martin Abadi
Photo: Tim Stephens

Martín Abadi, professor of computer science, has accepted a position on a key advisory board for Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, WA. Abadi joins 18 other leading researchers from around the world on Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board. The board was formed to advise the company on security, privacy, and reliability enhancements in Microsoft products and technologies.

"Achieving trustworthy computing will take many years and require thoughtful and sustained collaboration between the industry and academic communities," said Scott Charney, chief security strategist at Microsoft. "By formalizing the process of engaging with these distinguished experts, we are better able to benefit from their collective wisdom."

The board is composed of 19 leading research scientists and privacy policy experts, each with a significant track record in his or her field of expertise.
Abadi is a well-known expert on computer security. He is editor of the International Journal of Information Security and serves on the editorial boards of several other major computer science journals. Abadi has worked on important computer security protocols and holds patents for discoveries in distributed systems, programming language analysis, and computer security.
Back to top

James Kent to receive Overton Prize for computational biology

Jim Kent
Photo: Paul Schraub

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) has announced that James Kent, a research scientist at the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering, will receive the society's 2003 Overton Prize. The prize will be awarded at the ISCB's annual meeting to be held in Brisbane, Australia, from June 29 to July 3. Kent will present a keynote speech at the meeting.

The Overton Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement in the field of computational biology by a scientist in the early to middle phase of his or her career. It was established by the ISCB in memory of G. Christian Overton, a major contributor to the field of bioinformatics and member of the ISCB Board of Directors, who died unexpectedly in 2000.

Kent is best known for his work on the Human Genome Project when he was a graduate student in molecular, cell, and developmental biology at UCSC. Kent wrote a software program, called GigAssembler, that produced the first working draft of the human genome sequence by assembling the fragmented sequence data that had been generated by an international consortium of sequencing labs. He subsequently wrote the UCSC human genome browser, which provides researchers with free access to a wealth of genome sequence information.

Kent's main scientific goal has been to understand gene regulation by building a variety of bioinformatics tools for analyzing genomes and comparing the genomes of different species.
Back to top

Return to Front Page

  Maintained by pioweb@cats
UC Santa Cruz Home Page Contact Currents Currents Archives Search Currents Currents Home Maintained By Email Contact