Announcing the Dr. Dobb's Chair

I'm not sure what you do to get a "chair" or, for that matter, what you do when you have one. I do know they're generally associated with a university and, more often than not, there's a pile of money involved somewhere, somehow. And that it's an honor to be associated with one.

For instance, Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame is a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University and, since 2002, holder of the "College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science." Which means that he teaches several courses and conducts research involving programming tools, techniques, and languages--including the next-generation ISO standard C++0x. Stroustrup has been very productive and gracious in his position, especially when receiving a few months back the Sigma Xi 2005 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement which is awarded annually to engineers or scientists who have done important, impressive research, and have communicated the research to counterparts in other fields. In this case, Stroustrup gave his $5000 Grant-in-Aid of Research award to postdoctoral research associate Gabriel Dos Reis who researches theories and practicalities of C++-based software to better fashion. "I think he is very promising and doing brilliant things," Stroustrup said. "He works with me on a project called Pivot, which is to represent and analyze C++ programs, and he is on the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) C++ committee that is developing the next generation of C++."

More recently, the University of Waterloo announced its "Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada-Nortel Chair in Advanced Telecommunications Technologies," sponsored by the same. The chair has been established to research 3G and 4G broadband wireless technologies, with Amir Khandani, Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the university, appointed Senior Chair. Khandani also holds a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Wireless Systems.

Other university chairs that come to mind include the Yahoo! Founders Chair at Stanford University, endowed by David Filo and Chih-Yuan "Jerry" Yang, inventors of Yahoo!, which is to be granted to "an individual who has demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit, either through their research activities or through association with a start-up company or other commercial endeavor." Then there's the Watson and Marilyn Alberts Chair in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence the University of California, Berkeley, which was reserved for astronomers involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

However, the university chair that more recently comes to mind, its sad to say, is the University of Missouri's Kenneth L. Lay Chair in Economics. Alas, although the chair was endowed to the tune of $1.1 million by the now deceased Enron thief, the university can't get anyone to accept the honor.

In the spirit of good chairmanship, the powers that be at Dr. Dobb's have decided to support a chair of their own and I've just as graciously agreed to their kind offer by accepting that chair.

At least I now know that around here a "chair" is in fact a "chair". No strings, no endowments attached.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:26 AM  Permalink