UW News

August 31, 2000

Lazowska steps down, Notkin is new UW computer science chairman

Professor David Notkin, an internationally recognized expert in software engineering, will become the new chairman of the University of Washington’s nationally ranked Department of Computer Science & Engineering tomorrow when current chairman Ed Lazowska steps down after leading the department for eight years.

Notkin will be the seventh person to lead the department, which was established in 1968. CSE’s top post is a rotating position and chairpersons usually serve 5-year terms.

“The Department of Computer Science & Engineering has an unusually strong set of leaders, which reflects positively on the past and bodes exceedingly well for the future,” said Denice Denton, dean of the College of Engineering, in announcing Notkin’s appointment. She thanked Lazowska for his service, saying that “his boundless energy and enthusiasm and his leadership has had a strong and positive impact on the UW.”

Notkin received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in 1977 and a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in 1984, when he joined the UW faculty. He was an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fellow in 1998, received a Boeing Endowed Professorship in 1999 and was awarded the UW’s Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award in 2000. Recently, he served as chairman of ACM SIGSOFT (a special interest group concerned with software engineering) and as an editor of the journal IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

###

For more information, contact Notkin at (206) 685-3798 or notkin@cs.washington.edu, or Lazowska at (206) 543-4755 or lazowska@cs.washington.edu. Information on the transition is on the Web at http://lazowska.cs.washington.edu/notkin.html.

High-resolution images of the two can be found on the Web at www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/images/dnotkin.jpg for Notkin and www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/images/elazowska.jpg for Lazowska.