MCI’s Vinton G. Cerf, "Father of the Internet," Will Speak Oct. 23

DePaul’s School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems (CTI) will launch a Distinguished Lecture Series this fall featuring a trio of well-known computer scientists that include Vinton G. Cerf, widely known as the "Father of the Internet." The free, public lectures will take place at 6 p.m. on Oct. 2, Oct. 23 and Nov. 6 in DePaul’s Egan Urban Center, 243 S. Wabash Ave., 9^th Floor. A reception will follow each lecture.

"We’ve started the Distinguished Lecture Series to give people in Chicago’s technology industry a forum to hear influential people in our field," said Karen Bernstein, assistant professor at CTI and an organizer of the events. "We’re very pleased with the high quality of the speakers who have accepted our invitation to come to DePaul."

The series will begin on Oct. 2 with "Formal Methods: Past, Present, and Future," a lecture by Jeannette M. Wing, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Wing will discuss mathematically-based techniques used for specifying, designing, analyzing and verifying complex software and hardware systems. Her talk will review the early development of formal methods and describe the state of the art in some of the areas in which researchers and engineers are making the greatest strides: software specification, model checking, and theorem proving.

Last year, Jeannette Wing was named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for fundamental contributions to formal methods, programming languages and programming methodology, and for promoting the use of formal methods in software development.

On Oct. 23, Vinton G. Cerf, Senior Vice President, Internet Architecture and Engineering, MCI Communication Corp., will discuss the incredible growth of the Internet and its associated technologies, touching on its economic, social and policy implications.

Cerf will discuss how the Internet is absorbing and transforming other types of media, such as radio and television, and how it is affecting publishing by creating ever more powerful types of media. He also will talk about current work to assure the future of Internet-based communications as mankind begins to explore the solar system.

Known as the "Father of the Internet," Cerf co-designed the TCP/IP protocol, the computer language that gave birth to the Internet and which is commonly used today. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his research partner, Robert E. Kahn for founding and developing the Internet.

At MCI, Cerf 's team of architects and engineers design and implement the common network framework that delivers MCI's Internet-based services, including a combination of data, information, voice and video services for business and consumer use.

On Nov. 6, Ben Shneiderman, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, will present "The Eyes Have It: User Interfaces for Information Visualization." Shneiderman will discuss how the remarkable perceptual skills of humans are largely underutilized by current graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and what the next generation of animated GUIs and visual data mining tools could do to improve information visualization.

Shneiderman is the author of "Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems" and "Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction." He is also the co-author of two textbooks, editor of three technical books and has published more than 180 technical papers and book chapters. Shneiderman is the author of a seminal paper on direct manipulation, a term he coined in 1981 to describe the graphical user interface design principles: visual presentation of objects and actions combined with pointing techniques to accomplish rapid incremental and reversible operations.

For more information on CTI’s Distinguished Lecture Series, call 312/362-8382 or visit the web page at www.cs.depaul.edu/dls.