General Business

Microsoft Senior VP Honored for Contributions to UNIX, OS X and Windows

As well as for leadership in industrial research

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

11th of June 2008, 16:46 GMT

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Rick Rashid is a Microsoft top executive who has contributed not only to the Windows operating system, but also to platforms such as UNIX and Mac OS X. The Redmond company announced that Rashid was honored with the Piore Award from the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Emanuel R. Piore Foundation, for his work on modern operating systems, as well as for his contributions in industrial research. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pointed out that the award is a celebration of Rashid's career in computer science.

"I have always admired Rick's dedication to the idea that pushing the boundaries of computer

science will lead to advances that change people's lives for the better," Gates stated. "When we hired Rick to launch Microsoft Research 17 years ago, I had high hopes for what he would achieve. Since then, his contributions to Microsoft, to the field of computer science, and to society in general have always exceeded my expectations. This well-deserved award is a fantastic acknowledgement of the important impact of his great work."

Rick Rashid is the founder of Microsoft Research, and currently holds the position of Senior Vice President. But, before Microsoft Research, Rashid and his team developed Mach at the Carnegie Melon University. Mach was designed as a microkernel, and ended up surviving in operating systems such as UNIX, the Mac OS and even Windows.

"Part of the culture at Carnegie Melon was to be users for each others' systems. We all used Mach and helped Rick's team debug their experimental but robust operating system. Soon, another team was building a distributed transaction facility called Camelot on top of Mach, and a colleague and I were building programming-language support called Avalon on top of Camelot. It was a perfect layering of research projects," revealed Jeannette Wing, a CMU computer science professor.

Rashid joined the ranks of Microsoft in 1991, having been recruited by Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold. Now, in 2008, Rashid has been leading Microsoft Research for no less than 17 years. "I think we really created a new kind of research lab in industry, one that is a blend of computer science programs at universities and the industrial research lab setting," Rashid explained. "Our most important mission is moving the state-of-the-art forward in computer science, and over the years the research organization here has been incredibly well supported in that mission by the product organizations, and by Bill and Steve and the other executives." he concluded by saying.

TAGS:

Rick Rashid | Piore | Bill Gates | Microsoft Research

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