The UT Tower will shine with burnt orange lights Tuesday, October 17 to celebrate Cockrell School of Engineering Professor Bob Metcalfe being named the recipient of the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award.
Metcalfe, professor emeritus in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the honor for the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet. The ACM A.M. Turing Award, often called the “Nobel Prize of computing,” includes a $1 million prize, with financial support provided by Google. The award is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundations of computing.
“It is dangerous to accept an award for developing Ethernet, which turns 50 on May 22, 2023,” Metcalfe said in March when the honor was announced. “Over Ethernet’s 50 years, hundreds of people have earned some claim of inventorship. Join me in saying to these folks, ‘Thank you.’”
The Tower lighting in Metcalfe’s honor comes on the same day he spoke with members of the University community during a distinguished lecture series.
Before retiring from UT Austin in 2021, Metcalfe led innovation initiatives in the Cockrell School of Engineering and across campus for a decade. He is the founding director of the Texas Innovation Center, which launched in 2011 to help faculty members and students bring their scientific and engineering discoveries to market. He envisioned helping Austin become a better version of Silicon Valley.
