Postmark image The Donald B. Gillies Lectureship in Computer Science was established at the University of Illinois through memorial gifts by family and friends, with a major contribution by the Digital Equipment Corporation.
Professor Gillies, a native of Canada, did his undergraduate work at the University of Toronto, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1953. While in graduate school he worked as a graduate assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study with John von Neumann in the fields of game theory and computer science. Before coming to the University of Illinois in 1956, he spent two years with the National Research Development Corporation at Cambridge University and London, England. He was among the first mathematicians to become involved in the computer field, helping to program the first Sputnik orbit and later discovering three new prime numbers in the course of checking out Illiac II. Before his death in 1975, he was experimenting with educational uses and networking possibilities of minicomputers.
Professor Gillies was an inspiration to his students, taking an interest in both their professional and personal lives. Long before timesharing terminals, minicomputers and microprocessors made “hands on” computer experience commonplace, he recognized the need for students to have this opportunity and implemented a system to provide it. Throughout his work and teaching he stressed the importance of the ethical use of computing machines in contemporary science. Dedicated to the honest uses of technology, environmentally concerned, a man of wit, vigor and understanding, he challenged and stimulated all who knew him.
It is hoped that the Donald B. Gillies Lectureship in Computer Science will continue to enrich the lives of students and colleagues as an appropriate memorial to a man whose intellectual excellence and moral purpose made him a distinguished teacher and scientist.
mueller-thuns lecture logo: think more, learn more, do more. The Robert Mueller-Thuns Lectureship in Computer Science was established at the University of Illinois through memorial gifts by his wife, Nikki Mueller-Thuns Mirghafori (BS '91), family, friends, and colleagues.
Robert was born in Bonn, Germany and did his undergraduate work at the Technical University of Aachen, Germany. He attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1986 to 1990, where he received both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science. While in graduate school, he held internships at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, followed by positions at Cadence Design Systems and TCSI Corporation post-graduation. At the time of his untimely death at the age of 37, he was a Software Architect at Evolve Corporation, a start-up in San Francisco, CA. His areas of expertise were computer-aided design for VLSI, simulation, testing, parallel processing, formal design verification, as well as object oriented analysis and design, and pattern languages.
Robert was a remarkable human being: a gentle spirit with an insatiable intellectual curiosity and zest for life. Aside from being a researcher and computer scientist, he was a musician, an athlete, and a writer. He had a passion for thinking, ideas, and learning, as well as for living life through friendship, music, food, and travel. Even as he battled cancer, he never lost his optimism, sense of humor, and vitality. In the words of Paul Chen (PhD'93), a close friend: "Robert was known by his Illini friends as The Uberman, partly because of his German ethnicity, and partly because he was an amazing individual—someone whom we respected and admired for his ability to achieve excellence in all that he did. He had a passion for living. And he excelled in life: the Uberman could out-almost-anything us, all the while smiling effortlessly and encouragingly at us lesser mortals."
Robert thrived and made life-long friends at Illinois and it is hoped that the Mueller-Thuns Lectureship in Computer Science will give the chance to others at Illinois to think more, learn more, and do more as an appropriate memorial to a man whose intellectual intensity, integrity, and vibrancy made him an inspiration to all who knew him.
Open the original version of this page.
Usablenet Assistive is a UsableNet product. Usablenet Assistive Main Page.