GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER's
First Annual Excellence in
Information Science and Technology Award 2001

The Spring 2001 Series concluded on May 23 with a special colloquium held in conjunction with presentation of the Center's first annual Excellence in Information Science and Technology Award.

Congratulations to Mr. James Fischer and Dr. Christopher Lynnes, recipients of GSFC's First Annual Excellence in Information Science and Technology Award.

This award is presented annually to the Goddard employee(s) who best exhibit(s) broad, significant contributions to Goddard programs or projects in the areas of information science and technology. The award recognizes career achievement or a specific act of exceptional merit that was completed in the previous year.

This year's award recognizes Mr. James R. Fischer and Dr. Christopher S. Lynnes for individual accomplishments in information science and technology.

Mr. James R. Fischer
HPCC Earth and Space Sciences (HPCC/ESS)
Mr. Fischer's contributions opened a new era of massively parallel scientific processing. In the 1980's, he led the successful construction of the first Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) in the United States. The MPP was a 16,000 processor system with a single instruction multiple data stream. He launched the Frontiers of Massively Parallel Processing Conference in 1986, which has been instrumental in fostering the development of scientific applications for these systems. He has provided outstanding leadership to NASA's HPP Earth and Space Science Program. Mr. Fischer's vision fostered the development of the first Linux-based Beowulf cluster, which has since grown to become a pervasive computing tool in academia and government and a new product line for computer manufacturers. His many contributions have revolutionized high performance computing and have earned him world-wide recognition. The video Journey through Earth and Space illustrates the work of Mr. Fischer's project.

Dr. Christopher S. Lynnes
GSFC Earth Sciences - Data Active Archive Center
Dr. Lynnes' greatest contributions to IS&T are the systems whose design and construction he led on behalf of NASA Earth Science research and applications, including the Goddard Distributed Active Archive Center's (DAAC) first operational system, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Support System (TSS), the Web Hierarchical Ordering Mechanism (WHOM), which was a major contributor to the successful, timely processing of MODIS data and the Simple Scalable Script-based Science Processor (S4P). These contributions, plus Dr. Lynnes' expertise in applying state-of-the-art IS&T technologies to Earth Science needs have been truly exemplary and are internationally acknowledged.

The speaker for this special colloquium was:
TOMASO POGGIO
Learning in Brains and Machines (Webcast Archive)
Co-Director, MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Whitaker Professor of Vision Sciences and Biophysics