Rashid Will Receive Honorary Degree at 2011 Commencement

Byron SpiceThursday, April 28, 2011

Head of Microsoft Research Will Speak at SCS Diploma Ceremony

Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research and a former computer science professor here, will receive an honorary Doctor of Science and Technology degree at Carnegie Mellon's 2011 Commencement and will be keynote speaker at the School of Computer Science Diploma Ceremony and at the PhD hooding ceremony.

He is one of seven people who will receive honorary degrees at the May 15 commencement. The others include Chip Ganassi, owner of Chip Ganassi Racing Teams and a fervent supporter of the Robotics Institute's DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge teams, and Craig R. Barrett, retired chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the Intel Corporation.

Rashid, who joined Microsoft in 1991, oversees worldwide operations for Microsoft Research, an organization encompassing more than 850 researchers across six labs worldwide that he has modeled after Carnegie Mellon's computer science culture.

Previous to that, he was professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, where he directed the design and implementation of several influential network operating systems. He also published extensively about computer vision, operating systems, network protocols and communications security. During his CMU years, Rashid developed the Mach multiprocessor operating system, which has been influential in the design of modern operating systems and remains at the core of several commercial systems.

His research interests have focused on artificial intelligence, operating systems, networking and multiprocessors. He participated in the design and implementation of the CMU Distributed Sensor Network Testbed and CMU's SPICE distributed personal computing environment.

A gift from the Rashid family helped provide SCS with the 250-seat Rashid Auditorium in the Gates and Hillman centers.

Rashid was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2003 and presented with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Emanuel R. Piore Award and the SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award in 2008. He was also inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008. In addition, Rashid is a member of the National Science Foundation Computer Directorate Advisory Committee and a past member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency UNIX Steering Committee and the Computer Science Network Executive Committee. He is also a former chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery Software System Awards Committee.

Rashid received master of science (1977) and doctoral (1980) degrees in computer science from the University of Rochester. He graduated with honors in mathematics and comparative literature from Stanford University in 1974.

Read also CMU News Release.

For More Information

Byron Spice | 412-268-9068 | bspice@cs.cmu.edu