Top computing prize
goes to a University of
Michigan Ph.D.
candidate
Reported by Judith Axler Turner for the June 27, 1990 issue of
The Chronicle of Higher Education.
PHILIP EMEAGWALI,
who took on an
enormously difficult problem and, like most
students working on Ph.D. dissertations, solved it
alone, has won computation's top prize, captured
in the past only by seasoned research teams.
Mr. Emeagwali, a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering
and scientific computing at the University of Michigan,
was awarded the $1,000 Gordon Bell Prize from the
Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers for
speeding up a supercomputer to solve an important
problem.
Philip Emeagwali and his Gordon Bell Prize plaque
His program for the Connection Machine, a massively
parallel computer, made it run at 3.1 billion calculations
per second --- twice as fast as the speedup achieved
by last year's winners, and 24 times as fast as the
speedup achieved by the winners from the year before.
Mr. Emeagwali, who was the first to win using a
Connection Machine, solved a serious problem in the
petroleum industry. His program simulates the flow of
oil in a petroleum reservoir and enables engineers to
determine where best to place wells to capture as
much of the trapped oil as possible. Today's
technology enables recovery of about 30 per cent of
that oil, Mr. Emeagwali says. If his program can
squeeze out a few more percentage points, it will help
decrease U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
Mr. Emeagwali, 35, was a mathematical whiz as a
child in Nigeria, and since coming to the United States
has earned three master's degrees. Although the
Connection Machine, with more than 65,000
processors, is considered particularly difficult to use,
Mr. wrote his program after working on the computer
for only eight months.
Mr. Emeagwali hopes to continue his reseach and
remain in academe after he gets his Ph.D. this summer.
By Judith Axler Turner for
The Chronicle of Higher Education,
June 27, 1990
Philip Emeagwali and his Gordon Bell Prize plaque
