2004 News

• Congratulations to Mark Allman of the Networking Group and his wife Meredith. Their daughter Leah Madison was born on November 30, 2004 at 10:05 pm. Leah weighs 8 pounds 9 ounces and is 21 inches long. See her picture >>
• ICSI's XORP project was featured in an article by Alex Salkever in Business Week on November 29, 2004. The article, which discusses XORP's viability as an alternative to commercial routers, can be viewed online here. The article points out that while the current version of XORP ois not at all threatening to router companies such as Cisco, future modifications made possible through funding from Intel, Microsoft and the National Science Foundation could create an attractive alternative to more expensive routers.
• At the ICSI Town Meeting on October 12, 2004, Professor Nelson Morgan, Director of ICSI, announced that Dr. Srini Narayanan will be taking over the responsibility of leading the Artificial Intelligence group from Professor Jerry Feldman. Dr. Narayanan was selected by Professor Feldman to succeed him in this leadership role at ICSI after Professor Feldman was chosen to be the Project Director of Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley, a position he has held since July, 2004.
• ICSI's annual Board of Trustees meeting was held on October 1, 2004. At the meeting, ICSI Founders Ron Kay and Norbert Szyperski received Distinguished Service Awards, and former EECS Chair Shankar Sastry was elected Chairman of the Board. More. >>
• On September 21, 2004, NSF announced a five-year grant to open a Center for Internet Epidemiology and Defenses at ICSI and UC San Diego. Principal Investigators Vern Paxson of ICSI and Stefan Savage of UC San Diego will lead the Center in an effort to combat Internet epidemics. More. >>
• The eXtensible Open Router Platform (XORP) project released its open source router software. XORP differs from commercially available routers in several aspects, which are designed to make it more user-friendly, adaptable, and stable. See the press release. >>
• Mark Allman of the Networking Group was awarded a NASA Public Service Medal in September. This award recognizes exceptional contributions to the mission of NASA.
• On September 1, 2004, Marcia Bush joined ICSI as an Associate Director. Marcia will be working on business development, including technology licensing and working with industry partners. She worked at Xerox for about fifteen years, initially in a technical position managing a speech and image processing group, and later in marketing and business development. Under Marcia's guidance, ICSI hopes to make future expansion into new areas of research possible.
• On September 1st, ICSI welcomed the first two visiting researchers for the European Union Integrated Project called "Augmented Mulitparty Interaction" (AMI). Xavi Anguera and Marc Ferras of Spain will be working with Speech Group researchers on this project, which aims to improve computer enhanced multi-modal interaction. AMI is managed by two ICSI alumni, Herve Bourlard of IDIAP and Steve Renals of University of Edinburgh.
• On August 16, 2004, Siina Rantala was born. Siina is the daughter of visiting researcher Juuso Rantala and his wife Eveliina, and the younger sister of Isla. Congratulations to Siina and her family!
• BFOIT concluded its 2004 Summer Institute in August. Executive Director Orpheus Crutchfield said "both qualitatively and quantitatively, this summer was well above the rest." BFOIT expanded this year from serving 25 students to 75 students. See the press release. >>
• Congratulations to Sally Floyd of ICIR, recipient of the 2005 IEEE Internet Award. This award is presented annually for exceptional contributions to the advancement of Internet technology for network architecture, mobility and/or end-use applications. Floyd was chosen for "contributions to the Internet architecture, particularly in the areas of congestion control, traffic modeling, and active queue management."
• ICSI Faculty Associate Steve Weber was appointed Director of the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley on July 1, 2004. Institute of International Studies home page. >>
• Jerry Feldman, of ICSI's Artificial Intelligence Group and BCIS, was selected to be the Program Director of Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley starting in July, 2004.
• ICSI is the host of the 2004 EARS Novel Approaches retreat. This year's retreat is at the Bodega Bay Lodge and Spa from August 4-7, 2004.
• Ryan Ming Zhu, second son of Qifeng Zhu and his wife Xuemei Feng, was born on July 24, 2004 at 7:02 a.m. Ryan weighed nine pounds nine ounces at birth and was 21 1/2 inches long. His Chinese name is Zhu MingRun. Congralations to Ryan, his parents, and big brother Howard
• Congratulations to Pedro Ruiz and Abhishek Kumar, champions of the first ICSI Foosball Tournament. Eight teams participated in the tournament, which concluded on Friday, July 16. The tournament was a lot of fun for all participants, and we look forward to the next tournament - anyone wishing to compete is invited to practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:30 p.m. on the sixth floor. More. >>
• Anna Nierhoff, daughter of Till Nierhoff and Andrea Frömbgen and sister of Lisa Nierhoff, was born on Monday, July 12, 2004 at 4:53 p.m. She weighed9 lb 2 oz and was 22.25 inches long at birth. Congratulations to Anna and her family! See a picture of Anna here. >>
• ICSI alum Krste Asanovic, a member of the Computer Science faculty at MIT, was selected to become an External Fellow of ICSI in June, 2004. Professor Asanovic said that he is delighted to accept the invitation and looks forward to future collaborations with ICSI researchers.
• CSI Trustee Shankar Sastry has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). He is one of seven UC Berkeley professors selected this year.
  More. >>
• President Bush announced in May, 2004 that ICSI Faculty Associate Ion Stoica is one of 57 recipients of the 2002 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). More. >>
• A new book, "The Success of Open Source" by ICSI Faculty Associate Steve Weber, was published in April, 2004. More. >>
• XORP was featured in a CNET News.com article on April 19, 2004. More. >>
• Rebecca Siyao Chang was born on March 9, 2004. Her parents are ICSI alum Shawn Chang and his wife Phoebe. Congratulations to the whole family! Picture of Rebecca. >>
• ICSI's XORP Project (eXtensible Open Router Platform) was featured in an article in the March 2004 issue of Network Magazine. More. >>
• ICSI is participating in data collection for the Linguistic Data Consortium's Mixer project. The Mixer project is collecting telephone conversations for use in speech recognition research. More. >>
• ICSI's FrameNet Project hosted a TRANSCOOP workshop with the German SALSA Project March 22-26th, 2004. More. >>
• Kaia Alessandra Penilla was born on March 11, 2004 to proud parents Mary and Martin Pennilla. Congratulations to the whole family!
• ICSI Algorithms Researcher in the news: John Moody, a senior researcher with the Algorithms Group, was interviewed on the Bloomberg Financial News channel on Monday, March 1, 2004. He is also quoted extensivly in an article in the April 2004 issue of Bloomberg Markets. More. >>
• ICSI hosted an Open House on Friday, February 27, 2004. The event included posters, demonstrations of research, and lectures. More. >>
• ICSI Cybersecurity Researcher in the news: Nick Weaver, of the Networking Group, was quoted in the New York Times on February 8, 2004. More. >>
• On January 16, 2004, Liz Shriberg and Andreas Stolcke hosted a meeting of researchers working on a new ITR project. More. >>
• In January, 2004, ICSI welcomed several new members to the Board of Trustees. ICSI would like to thank former Chairman Elwyn Berlekamp for his many years of service, and welcome our new Chairman, Clifford Higgerson. More. >>
• The ICSI Meeting Corpus has been released by the Linguistic Data Consortium.
  More. >>
• AnnaLee Saxenian, an ICSI faculty associate, has been appointed dean of UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. The full story is online here. >>
• Speech research makes headlines: Liz Shriberg, a senior researcher at ICSI, was quoted on January 3, 2004 in a New York Times article about disfluencies in speech. She was subsequently interviewed live on the radio talk show "Adler On Line" with Charles Adler of CJOB 68 Radio in Winnipeg, Canada, on Friday, January 9. More. >>
• Richard Karp, leader of ICSI's Algorithms Group, will be presented with the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science for his contributions to the understanding of computational complexity.
• Scott Shenker, leader of ICSI's Networking Group, has been selected as an ACM Fellow for his achievements in the field of information technology.

The ICSI Gazette

September 2004 (pdf)

March 2004 (pdf)