INDUSTRY

Reaffirming its commitment to attracting and retaining the world's top technical minds, Sun Microsystems today announced that it has dramatically bolstered its technical roster during the last 12 months. Through the acquisition of StorageTek, Sun gained two Sun Fellows and six Distinguished Engineers (DEs). Sun also announced today that its DE program has grown significantly, both through promotions and hires. Additionally, Sun today announced that Danny Cohen, Sun Distinguished Engineer, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the advanced design, graphics, and real-time network protocols of computer systems. The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is one of the four National Academies that act as the nation's highest advisors on science, engineering and medicine. The mission of the NAE is to promote the technological welfare of the nation by marshaling the knowledge and insights of eminent members of the engineering profession, and election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. "The past year was remarkable for Sun on the talent front. Not only did we dramatically grow the ranks of our top thinkers and researchers, but we did so in an increasingly competitive hiring market," said Greg Papadopoulos, executive vice president and CTO, Sun Microsystems. "Most impressive is the mix of people we are honoring today -- Sun veterans who have been with the company for more than a decade, people from the StorageTek acquisition, and new hires from colleges and other labs. Technology's top thinkers and researchers continue to flock to Sun because we value innovation and foster it in every way we can." Sun Fellows Highly prestigious, the title of Sun Fellow is the most senior rank that can be attained within Sun's engineering organization. Sun looks to its 12 Fellows to help guide its technical development, including identifying new opportunities and advising the management team on technical issues. The two new Fellows, Richard Dee and Jim Hughes, join the elite group of Fellows at Sun, who include Nick Aneshansley, Whitfield Diffie, Graham Hamilton, Guy Steele, Marc Tremblay, James Gosling, Jim Mitchell, Mike Splain, Ivan Sutherland, and Bob Sproull. -- Richard Dee: Dee came to Sun via the acquisition of StorageTek in September 2005. Currently Sun's lead technical engineer for tape technology, he coordinates Sun's advanced tape research. During his tenure at StorageTek (1982-2005), he designed and developed thin film magnetic recording heads and inductive recording heads for high-density tape applications. -- Jim Hughes: Hughes is a leading expert in storage and security and joined Sun after the StorageTek acquisition. He has published numerous papers on secure file systems and storage encryption and is currently the chairman of the IEEE Security in Storage Working Group. Sun Distinguished Engineers Sun also added 10 new Distinguished Engineers in 2005, through the StorageTek acquisition, hiring and internal promotions. These additions grow the program considerably, expanding Sun's technological leadership in the areas of storage, digital rights management, processor design, virtual machines, and more. Distinguished Engineers joining Sun from StorageTek include: -- Michael Leonhardt: With more than 32 years of storage experience, Leonhardt's knowledge of the industry is unparalleled. He was instrumental in StorageTek's early work in optical recording, small libraries and tape arrays. -- Charles Milligan: Holder of 46 patents, Milligan managed the development of two notable StorageTek software initiatives -- both the 4480 tape drive and the 4400 library products. -- Ravi Kavuri: While at StorageTek, Kavuri helped advance several new storage technologies, including the Common Platform, a distributed operating infrastructure that enables the development of multiple storage applications. -- Marcia Martin: Martin's work has focused on the paradigm between data backup and data recovery. She was the lead architect of the 'continuous data protection,' a concept that's first deployment won four best-of-year industry awards for StorageTek in 2003. "Jim Hughes, Richard Dee and these four Distinguished Engineers represent the top thinkers in the storage industry. Together, their expertise spans storage infrastructures, security, tape drives, optical recording and much more," said Jon Benson, senior vice president, product development, Data Management Group, Sun Microsystems. "Combined, they have 110 patents and more than 130 years of storage experience. The fact that these six talented researchers chose to work for Sun following the StorageTek acquisition speaks volumes and bodes extremely well for the future of our storage division." Newly promoted and newly hired Distinguished Engineers at Sun include: -- Gilad Bracha: Bracha maintains the specifications for the Java programming language and the Java virtual machine. He is well known for his research in object-oriented programming languages, and seeks to apply such research as widely as possible. -- Robert Drost: During his 12 year career at Sun, Drost has focused on pioneering new chip designs. His work on the Proximity Communications program in Sun Labs looks at removing the disparity between on-chip performance and off-chip data bandwidth. -- Hans Eberle: He is currently leading the Next-Generation Switch project in Sun Labs, exploring technologies and architectures for large data center switches. Prior to Sun, he was a Principal Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he worked on one of the first commercial ATM networks. -- Dan Ingalls: Principal architect of the Smalltalk environments, Ingalls joined Sun in 2005 and will direct Sun Labs' research in Virtual Machines. Prior to Sun, Ingalls worked at Hewlett Packard Labs, where he designed a module architecture for Squeak. -- Georgios Konstadinidis: During his nine year career at Sun, Konstadinidis has been involved in the design and development of Sabre, Sapphire, Cheetah, Jalapeno, Serrano and Jaguar CPUs. He also helped the Niagara development team and currently, is the chief engineer for Rock, the high-end processor. -- Brenda Laurel: With extensive research, writing and entrepreneurial experience, Laurel brings to Sun Labs a rich background focused on the interaction between humans and computers. At Sun Labs, she directs the Digital Media and Media Design Group. -- Susan Landau: Landau joined Sun six years ago, with a background in applied mathematics and computer science. She worked with Sun Fellow Whit Diffie on policy issues related to cryptography and currently, is one of the leading world experts on the policy issues raised by digital rights management. -- Swee Lim: Lim is an expert on highly horizontally scalable network services and on Java technologies for telecommunications OSS and core networks. Currently, he is leveraging his expertise to architect a scalable, reliable, and efficient Sun Connection Network. -- Mike Shapiro: A three-time winner of Sun's Chairman's Award for Innovation, Shapiro is the senior architect for RAS features in the Solaris Kernel Group. For Solaris 10 Operating Systems, he created and led the effort to design and build Sun's approach to Predictive Self-Healing, and co-created DTrace, designing and building its virtual machine and compiler. -- Mario Wolczko: Focused primarily on object-oriented programming language design and usage and the implementation of virtual machines (in both hardware and software), Wolczko is a 12 year veteran of Sun Labs. He is currently heading up the Maxwell project, which looks at the Java memory architecture.