UW News

February 8, 2011

UW's Hank Levy elected to National Academy of Engineering

UW News

Henry 'Hank' Levy

The Percussion Ensemble will perform May 29 in Meany Studio Theater.

Henry M. Levy, (“Hank” Levy), a University of Washington professor of computer science and engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

He was among 68 new members and 9 foreign associates announced today. Election to the academy is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer.

In electing Levy, the academy cited his “contributions to design, implementation, and evaluation of operating systems, distributed systems, and processor architectures.” His research focuses on operating systems, computer architecture, and security.

Levy has served as chairman of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering since 2006. He also currently holds the Wissner-Slivka endowed chair.

He is author of two books and over 100 papers on computer systems design, and has supervised 23 doctoral students and 17 masters students.

Levy has also co-founded two companies: Performant, which allowed large companies to eliminate website performance bottlenecks, and Skytap, which provides automated cloud computing services for enterprises. He is currently on the technical advisory boards of Isilon Systems, Zillow.com, Corensic and Madrona Venture Group.

Before entering academia, Levy worked as a consulting engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), an early computer manufacturer.

Levy holds a bachelors degree in math and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and a masters degree in computer science from the UW. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a recipient of a Fulbright Research Scholar Award.

Also elected this year is UW alumnus Frank Robinson, who graduated in 1957 with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. He went on to found Robinson Helicopter Company in California, the largest manufacturer of civil helicopters in North America, and is known as “the Henry Ford of helicopters.” Robinson was cited for “the conception, design, and manufacture of low-noise, low life-cycle cost, and high-reliability helicopters.”

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For more information, contact Levy at 206-543-9204 or levy@cs.washington.edu.

The NAE press release is posted at http://national-academies.org.