Page Contents: Martín Abadi named to Microsoft advisory board for security issues James Kent to receive Overton Prize for computational biology
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March 17, 2003 Awards and Honors Martín Abadi named to Microsoft advisory board for security issues
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.
James Kent to receive Overton
Prize for computational biology
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. |
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