Stonebraker Honored with USENIX "FLAME" Award Recognizing Lifetime Achievements

Anaheim, California — Recognizing a lifetime of contributions to the UNIX community in both intellectual achievement and service, USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association honored acclaimed academic and entrepreneur Dr. Michael Stonebraker with its 2005 Flame Award.

A leading database, operating systems, and expert systems designer for over 30 years, Dr. Stonebraker is well-known for his work in developing the INGRES and POSTGRES database systems under a freely distributable BSD license. Dr. Stonebraker turned his database systems technology into successful commercial ventures, founding Ingres Corporation and Illustra Information Technologies, Inc. His next undertaking, the Mariposa project became Cohera, a company that was later sold to PeopleSoft. All three of these projects were developed at the University of California, Berkeley, where Dr. Stonebraker served as a professor of computer science for 25 years.

"I have been using the results of Dr. Stonebraker's work for over fifteen years, said Jon "maddog" Hall, Chairman of the USENIX Awards Committee. ÒHis demonstrated ability to develop new ideas and deliver them in an Open and freely available manner, then taking the idea and making it a commercial reality should be applauded, then studied by fledgling entrepreneurs."

Dr. Stonebraker is currently an adjunct professor of computer science at M.I.T., where he has helped build Aurora, a stream processing engine. In 2003, he founded StreamBase Systems to market this technology and serves as its chief technology officer.

Dr. Stonebraker has authored and co-authored scores of research papers on database technology, operating systems design, and expert systems. He has been active in the ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD), both as a member and a leader.

He has a B.S. from Princeton (1965) and an M.S. (1967) and a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Michigan. His honors include the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2005, the ACM Software System Award in 1988, and the ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award in 1994. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998.

About the USENIX Association
USENIX is the Advanced Computing Systems Association. For 30 years, it has been the leading community for engineers, system administrators, scientists, and technicians working on the cutting edge of the computing world. USENIX conferences are the essential meeting grounds for the presentation and discussion of technical advances in all aspects of computing systems. For more information about the USENIX Association, visit http://www.usenix.org.