Microsoft Executive to Deliver Next Sheffield Engineering Lecture
Nathan Myhrvold, Ph.D., chief technology officer and member of the Executive Committee at Microsoft Corp., will present the next Sheffield Fellowship address at Yale University. His talk, titled “The Future of Software,” will be presented Thursday, Oct. 29, at 4:30 p.m. in Sudler Auditorium of William Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St.
Free and open to the public, the talk will be followed by a reception in the President’s Room, Woolsey Hall, corner of College and Grove streets. D. Allan Bromley, Dean of the Yale Faculty of Engineering, is sponsor of the fellowship program.
Myhrvold reports directly to Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and is responsible for the broad strategic and business planning for the entire company. He leads the Advanced Technology and Research Group, providing technical leadership for the more than $2-billion-a-year investment made in research and development across the company.
Previously, Myhrvold was group vice president of Applications and Content, which comprised a number of Microsoft divisions, including Desktop Applications, Consumer, Research, and Microsoft On-line Systems. Prior to this position, Myhrvold was senior vice president of Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Division, responsible for advanced product development in areas such as interactive television (ITV), advanced graphics and new forms of consumer computing. He also founded and continues to manage Microsoft Research, a research lab dedicated to creating new technology in support of the company’s vision for the evolution of personal computing.
Myhrvold joined Microsoft as director of special projects in 1986 when Microsoft acquired Dynamical Systems, a Berkeley software company. Before founding Dynamical Systems, Myhrvold was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University. He worked with Professor Stephen Hawking on research in cosmology, quantum field theory in curved space time, and quantum theories of gravitation.
Myhrvold holds a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics and a master’s degree in mathematical economics from Princeton University. He also has a master’s degree in geophysics and space physics, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, both from the University of California. His education has also included certificates in mountain climbing, formula car racing, photography and French cooking.
In May 1993, Myhrvold joined the board of trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., one of the world’s foremost institutions for pure scientific research. He serves on the advisory board of Princeton University’s department of physics. In January 1994, he was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown to the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council.
When he takes time off, Myhrvold works as an assistant chef at one of Seattle’s leading French restaurants. He has competed twice in the world championship of barbecue in Memphis, Tennessee, winning first and second place titles.
The Sheffield Fellowship was established in 1996 to honor the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. Founded in 1852 to train engineers, the school produced some of the greatest inventors and industrial leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries before it was absorbed into the growing Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the mid-1940s.
The Sheffield Fellowship brings to Yale leaders and innovators in business, industry and government. In addition to presenting a lecture, fellows tour laboratories and classrooms and meet with faculty and students. Informal discussions with members of student organizations provide career perspectives in engineering and related fields.
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