ACM Group Taps Multimedia Visionary for Top Award

At the ACM International Conference on Multimedia in Beijing, China, the ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM) will present its prestigious technical achievement award to Lawrence A. Rowe, president of FX Palo Alto Laboratory, for his contributions to media software systems. Rowe, founding director of the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, led the development and deployment of the Berkeley Webcasting System, which produces over 30 hours a week of Berkeley course lectures that are viewed on the Internet by millions of people worldwide each year.

The 2009 SIGMM Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications will be presented at the ACM International Conference on Multimedia 2009, October 19-24.

Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, was cited for his pioneering research in continuous media software and visionary leadership of the multimedia research community. While at Berkeley, he headed the group that produced the Berkeley MPEG-1 Tools, the Berkeley Multimedia, Interfaces, and Graphics (MIG) Seminar Internet Webcast, and the Open Mash Streaming Media Toolkit. Earlier in his career, he worked on database application development tools and technologies that were later commercialized by Ingres Corp.

A graduate of UC Irvine with a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in information and computer science, Rowe is an ACM Fellow and past chair of SIGMM. He has consulted with and served on the technical advisory boards of numerous companies and co-founded several companies, including Ingres and Ncast Corp.