Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems Ceo, To Speak At Institute For Advanced Study

Bill Joy, corporate executive officer and chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, Inc., will speak on "Science and Safety in the Information Age" on October 11 at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study. A reception will follow.

The event is the first in a series of public lectures sponsored by the Institute’s School of Social Science during the academic year 2000-2001 in connection with a projected year-long exploration of "Information Technology, New Media and the Social Sciences."

Joy received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, and an M.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he designed the version of UNIX that became the standard in education and research. Cofounder of Sun Microsystems, he joined the company from Berkeley in 1982, leading its technical strategy and spearheading its open systems philosophy. He became chief scientist in 1998.

Called by Fortune magazine "The Edison of the Internet," Joy, 45, is cochair since 1997 of the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee; this group provides guidance on all areas of high-performance computing, communications and information technologies to accelerate development and adoption of technologies that will be important in the 21^st century.

Joy’s most recent work is on the Jini distributed computing technology for networking computer devices using Java, and on the Sun Community Source Licensing model, designed to allow companies to share their intellectual property in source form, to facilitate cooperation with customers, partners, educators and researchers.

Corecipient of the Computerworld-Smithsonian award for Innovation in 1999, Joy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.