UW News

August 18, 1997

Intel awards University of Washington $5.9 million in computer equipment and service

The University of Washington will receive $5.9 million in state-of-the-art computer equipment and service from Intel Corp. as part of the company’s $85 million Technology for Education 2000 Program, it was announced today (Aug. 18).

The award was based on an interdisciplinary proposal submitted by UW Provost Lee Huntsman. The computer equipment will be distributed to schools and departments as follows:

* College of Arts and Sciences: $1.7 million

* School of Medicine: $730,000

* College of Engineering: $500,000

* Department of Electrical Engineering: $1.46 million

* Department of Computer Science and Engineering: $1.53 million

In addition, UW will provide these recipients with space, four new staff positions for two years, and $200,000 funding over five years, according to Huntsman. In his proposal to Intel, Huntsman outlined a three-pronged approach for integrating Intel technology into the UW:

* Improving advanced scientific computing applications in areas such as astrophysics, molecular biotechnology, computational fluid dynamics and virtual reality.

* Providing media applications spanning the traditional discipline boundaries and models for novel Intel architecture applications in education, research, medicine, and entertainment

* Serving the educational enterprise — administrative computing, electronic mail and other critical networking needs. Intel architecture will be incorporated into the UW computing infrastructure in ways that will enhance an area that has traditionally been the domain of mainframe or UNIX technology.

The proposal, which will bring together more than 200 faculty, graduate students, researchers and staff from across the campus, will provide an unparalleled testbed for Intel-based technology in a major research environment, Huntsman said. This combined with the fact that the University of Washington is a principal collaborator with many of the other top-tier research universities–Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, and others–ensures that Intel’s latest investment in the University of Washington will have the widest, broadest possible impact and exposure.

Intel’s technology grant program supports university research and curriculum development and puts PCs, workstations, servers and networking hardware based on Intel architecture in key U.S. research universities.

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For more information, contact Greg Zick, Professor and Chair, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, (206) 543-6515 <!—at end of each paragraph insert

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