Computer Science & Computer Engineering

Distinguished Lecture Series in Computer Science

The UW-L Distinguished Lecture Series in Computer Science attracts internationally-recognized leaders in computer science for lectures, technical symposia, and workshops. The series was started in 1990 and is supported through the UW-La Crosse Foundation and the College of Science and Health.

Patrick Hanrahan, 2023 Distinguished Lecturer

is the Canon Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. As a founding employee at Pixar Animation Studios, Hanrahan led the design of RenderMan. Hanrahan served as a co-founder and CTO of Tableau Software. He has received three Academy Awards for Science and Technology, the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, the SIGGRAPH Stephen A. Coons Award, and the IEEE Visualization Career Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, he received the ACM A.M. Turing Award. Dr. Hanrahsn was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he earned an undergradaute B.S. degree in Nuclear Engineering and a Ph.D. in Biophysics.

Please refer to the announcement below for details. Both presentations are open to the public.

Dr. Pat Hanrahan Announcement
2017
Cliff Young

Member of Google Brain team and one of the designers of Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) which supports deep learning applications. Prior to joining Google, Dr. Young worked at D. E. Shaw Research, building special-purpose, massively parallel supercomputers for molecular dynamics.

2016
Shafi Goldwasser

RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and professor of computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

2014
Vijay Kumar

UPS Foundation Professor, School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Fellow of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Member of the National Academy of Engineering.

2013
Katherine Yelick

Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. Recipient of the ACM Athena Award.

2011
Leslie G. Valiant

T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. Recipient of the ACM's 2010 Turing Award, the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science 2008 EATCS award, and the 1997 Knuth Award.

2010
Charles Thacker

Leader of the Computer Architecture group at Microsoft Research. Recipient of the ACM's 2009 Turing Award, the IEEE 2007 Von Neumann Medal and National Academy of Engineering Charles Stark Draper prize..

2009
Barbara Liskov

Institute Professor at MIT and Associate Provost for Faculty Equity. Recipient of the ACM's 2008 Turing Award, IEEE 2004 Von Neumann Medal and the ACM SIGPLAN 2008 Programming Language Achievement Award.

2008
Frances Allen

IBM Fellow Emerita at the T. J. Watson Research Laboratory. Recipient of the ACM's 2006 Turing Award for pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution.

2007
Jeannette M. Wing

President's Professor of Computer Science and the head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

2006
Victor R. Basili

Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. He was Executive Director of the FraunhoferCenter – Maryland and founder and principal of the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) at NASA/GSFC.

2005
Tom DeFanti

Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), director of the Software Technologies Research Center and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

2004
Suzanne Weghorst

Research scientist and research director at theUniversity of Washington's Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab).

2003
Henry Fuchs

Fedrico Gil Professor in the Computer Science Department, as well as an adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering and adjunct professor of Radiation Oncology of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Research includes virtual reality as it relates to medicine through three-dimensional biomedical imaging, as well as head-mounted displays.

2002
Yale Patt

Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Ernest Cockrell, Jr., Centennial Chair in Engineering, TheUniversity of Texas at Austin. Researcher in high performance computer implementation generally five to 10 years beyond what industry provides at that point in time.

2000
Ken Kennedy

Ann & John Doerr Professor of Computational Engineering and Director of the Center for High Performance Software Research at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

1999
David Harel

William Sussman Professor of Mathematics at theWeizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He is the inventor of the language of statecharts (1983), and was part of the team that designed Statemate (1984-1987) and Rhapsody (1997).

1998
Anita K. Jones

Professor of Computer Science in the School ofEngineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. Department of Defense, Director of Defense Research and Engineering from 1992 to 1996.

1997
David Lorge Parnas

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NSERC/Bell Industrial Research Chair in Software Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

1996
Raj Reddy

Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Computer Science and Robotics. Co-recipient of the ACM's 1994 Turing Award.

1995
Andries van Dam

Professor, founder and first Chair of Computer Science Department at Brown University and author of five books on computer graphics.

1993
David Patterson

Professor at the University of California - Berkeley. Co-author of important texts in Computer Architecture. Led the design of RISC 1 (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) Architecture and RAID Systems.

1992
David Gries

Professor at Cornell University, author of five books on computing, and recipient of Computing Research Assoc. Service Award - 1991.

1991
Richard Stallman

Founder of the League for Programming Freedom, President of the Free Software Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation Fellow.