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Danny Hillis

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William Daniel Hillis (born September 25, 1956) is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and computer scientist, who pioneered parallel computers and their use in artificial intelligence. He founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer, and subsequently was Vice President of Research and Disney Fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Daniel Hillis
Hillis in 2022
Born
William Daniel Hillis

(1956-09-25) September 25, 1956 (age 68)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology (BS, PhD)
Spouse
Taylor Milsal
​
(m. 2019)​
[1]
AwardsDan David Prize (2002)
Grace Murray Hopper Award (1989)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer Science
Computer Engineering
InstitutionsThinking Machines
Walt Disney Imagineering
Applied Invention
Doctoral advisorMarvin Minsky
Gerald Jay Sussman
Claude Shannon

Hillis was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for advances in parallel computers, parallel software, and parallel storage.

More recently, Hillis co-founded Applied Minds,[2] and Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists, and artists.[3]

Biography

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Early life and academic work

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Born September 25, 1956, in Baltimore, Maryland, Danny Hillis spent much of his childhood living overseas, in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received his bachelor of science in mathematics in 1978. As an undergraduate, he worked at the MIT Logo Laboratory under the tutelage of Seymour Papert, developing computer hardware and software for children.[4] During this time, he also designed computer-oriented toys and games for the Milton Bradley Company. While still in college, he co-founded Terrapin Inc., a producer of computer software, including Logo, for elementary schools.[5][6]

As a graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,[7] Hillis designed tendon-controlled robot arms[8] and a touch-sensitive robot "skin".[9]

During his college years, Hillis was part of the team that built a computer composed entirely of Tinkertoys,[10] currently at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.[11]

At MIT, Hillis began to study Artificial Intelligence under Marvin Minsky. In 1981, he proposed building a massively parallel computer for Artificial Intelligence, consisting of a million processors, each similar to a modern Graphics Processing Unit. This work culminated in the design of a massively parallel computer with 64,000 processor cores. He named it the Connection Machine, and it became the topic of his PhD, for which he received the 1985 Association for Computing Machinery Doctoral Dissertation award.[12] Hillis earned his doctorate as a Hertz Foundation Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon and Gerald Sussman, receiving his PhD in 1988. He later served as an adjunct professor at the MIT Media Lab, where he wrote The Pattern on the Stone.

Technology career

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Hillis has founded a number of technology companies, including Thinking Machines Corporation, Applied Minds, Metaweb Technologies, Applied Proteomics,[13] and Applied Invention.[14] Hillis has over 300 issued patents[15] in fields including parallel computers, touch interfaces, disk arrays, forgery prevention methods, electronic and mechanical devices, and bio-medical techniques, RAID disk arrays, multicore multiprocessors and for wormhole routing in parallel processing.[16]

Thinking Machines

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As a graduate student at MIT, Hillis co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation to produce and market parallel computers, developing a series of influential products called the Connection Machine.[17] At the time the company produced many of the fastest computers in the world.[18] The Connection Machine was used in demanding computation and data-intensive applications. It was used by the Stanford Exploration Project for oil exploration[19][20] and for pioneering data mining applications by American Express,[21] as well as many scientific applications at organizations including Schlumberger, Harvard University, University of Tokyo, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA, Sandia National Laboratories, National Center for Supercomputer Applications, Army High Performance Computing Research Center, University of California Berkeley, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Syracuse University.

In addition to designing the company's major products, Hillis worked closely with users of his machine, applying it to problems in astrophysics, aircraft design, financial analysis, genetics, computer graphics, medical imaging, image understanding, neurobiology, materials science, cryptography, and subatomic physics.

At Thinking Machines, he built a team of scientists, designers, and engineers, including people in the field as well as those who later became leaders and innovators in multiple industries. The team included Sydney Brenner, Richard Feynman,[22] Brewster Kahle, and Eric Lander.

Among the users of Thinking Machines computers was Sergey Brin, who went on later to found Google,[23] and Neal Stephenson, who attempted to use a CM-2 to implement a game that he later turned into the novel Snow Crash.[24]

Disney Imagineering

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In 1996, Hillis joined The Walt Disney Company in the newly created role of Disney Fellow[25] and as vice president, Research and Development at Disney Imagineering.[26] He developed new technologies and business strategies for Disney's theme parks, television, motion pictures, and consumer products businesses.[27][28] He also designed new theme park rides, a full-sized walking dinosaur,[29] and various micro mechanical devices.

Applied Minds

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Main article: Metaweb

In 2000, Hillis co-founded the R&D think-tank Applied Minds with his Disney colleague Bran Ferren. Minds is a team of engineers, scientists, and designers that provide design and technology services for clients. The creative environment and the diverse projects it undertook gained Applied Minds abundant media attention. "It's as if Willy Wonka's chocolate factory just yawned wide to welcome us. Only here, all the candy plugs in," said an article in Wired magazine.[30] Work done at the firm covered the range of industries and application domains, including satellites,[31] helicopters,[32] and educational facilities.[33]

While at Applied Minds, Hillis designed and built a large-scale computer data center for Sun Microsystems (the Sun Modular Datacenter) that would fit into a standard 20-foot shipping container,[34][35] solving, among others, the problems of accommodating processor capacity, cooling, power requirements, and storage[36] within a uniquely portable solution. This type of "datacenter in a box," has now become a common method for building large data centers.[37]

For Herman Miller, Hillis designed an audio privacy solution[38][39] based on phonetic jumbling—Babble[40]—which was received in the media as a version of the Cone of Silence, and was marketed through a new company, Sonare. Also for Herman Miller, Hillis developed a flexible reconfigurable power and lighting system,[41][42] which was marketed through another new company, Convia.

As part of an early touchscreen map table interface, Hillis invented and patented the use of multiple touch points to control a zoom interface, which is now called "pinch to zoom.".[43] One of these patents was the basis for the USPTO decision[44] to reject Apple Inc.'s claim on a "pinch-to-zoom" patent in its legal dispute with Samsung, on the grounds that it was described in the Hillis patent.

Metaweb Technologies

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In 2005, Hillis and others from Applied Minds founded Metaweb Technologies to develop a semantic data storage infrastructure[45] for the Internet, and Freebase, an open, structured database of the world's knowledge.[46] That company was acquired by Google,[47] and its technology became the basis of the Google Knowledge Graph.

Cancer research and Applied Proteomics

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In 2012, Hillis helped to create a research program on cancer and proteomics as Professor of Research Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and the principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute's Physical Sciences in Oncology Laboratory at USC.[48] He co-founded Applied Proteomics (API)[13] with David Agus to make proteomics-based biomarker discovery practical.[49] Hillis and his colleagues at API developed one of the first protein biomarker discovery platforms and a blood test for early stage colon cancer, but they were unable to convince investors to finance taking their proteomic technology to the market.[50][51]

Hillis has academic appointments as the Judge Widney Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Southern California,[52] Professor of Research Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and research professor of engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.[53] He was the first principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute's Physical Sciences in Oncology Laboratory at USC.[48]

Applied Invention

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In 2015, Hillis co-founded Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists, and artists. Applied Invention develops technology solutions in partnership with other companies and entrepreneurs.

Applied Invention co-founded Dark Sky,[54] a weather forecasting technology company with consumer web and mobile applications[55] that was eventually sold to Apple.[56]

The Pattern on the Stone

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Main article: The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work

Hillis' 1998 popular science book The Pattern on the Stone attempts to explain concepts from computer science for laymen using simple language, metaphor and analogy. It moves from Boolean algebra through topics such as information theory, parallel computing, cryptography, algorithms, heuristics, Turing machines, and evolving technologies such as quantum computing and emergent systems.

The Long Now Foundation

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In 1986, Hillis expressed alarm that society had what he called a "mental barrier" of looking at the year 2000 as the limit of the future.[57] He proposed a project to build a mechanical clock that would last 10,000 years. This project became the initial project of The Long Now Foundation, which he co-founded with Stewart Brand and where he serves as co-chairman. A prototype of the Clock of the Long Now is on display at the London Science Museum. A full-scale mechanical clock is being installed at a site inside a mountain in western Texas.[58]

Awards

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Hillis is the recipient of the inaugural Dan David Prize for shaping and enriching society and public life in 2002,[59] the 1991 Spirit of American Creativity Award for his inventions,[60] the 1989 Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions to computer science,[12] and the 1988 Ramanujan Award for his work in applied mathematics.

Hillis is a member of the National Academy of Engineering,[61] a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery,[12] a fellow of the International Leadership Forum,[62] and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[63]

References

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  1. ^ "Picnic at Danny Hillis & Taylor Milsal's home". Long Now Boston. Archived from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  2. ^ "Applied Minds, LLC". AppliedMinds.com. Archived from the original on October 8, 1999. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  3. ^ "Applied Invention". www.AppliedInvention.com. Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  4. ^ "Parallel Computing Pioneers: W. Daniel Hillis". Parallel Computing Research Newsletter. 4 (4). Fall 1996. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007. Retrieved May 31, 2007.
  5. ^ Scannell, Tim (June 5, 1978). "Micro-based turtle serves as mapping, teaching aid". Computerworld: 151. Archived from the original on April 14, 2021. Retrieved November 2, 2020.
  6. ^ "Robot Turtle". Personal Computing. August 17, 1978.
  7. ^ Rifkin, Glenn (January 28, 2016). "Marvin Minsky, pioneer in artificial intelligence, dies at 88". New York Times. Archived from the original on November 21, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
  8. ^ Hillis, W.D. "Active touch sensing" (PDF). Master's dissertation MIT. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 19, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
  9. ^ Hillis, W.D. (June 1982). "A high resolution imaging touch sensor". International Journal of Robotics Research. 1 (2): 33–44. doi:10.1177/027836498200100202. S2CID 111014047.
  10. ^ Dewdney, A.K. (October 1989). "A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe" (PDF). Scientific American. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
  11. ^ Tinkertoy Computer. Computer History Museum. 1978. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
  12. ^ a b c "William Daniel Hillis". Award Winners. Association for Computing Machinery. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
  13. ^ a b "Applied Proteomics". Archived from the original on September 30, 2017. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  14. ^ "Applied Invention". Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  15. ^ "US Patent Office search results show 321 patents". USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  16. ^ Leiserson, C.; et al. (1992). "The Network Architecture of the Connection Machine CM-5". SPAA '92 Proceedings of the fourth annual ACM symposium of Parallel algorithms and architectures.
  17. ^ The Rise and Fall of Thinking Machines Corporation Archived February 9, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Inc. Magazine, September 1995
  18. ^ "Top500 Supercomputer Sites". Sublist Generator. Archived from the original on December 7, 2018. Retrieved January 3, 2019.
  19. ^ "Stanford University announces the purchase of Thinking Machines' CM-5 Supercomputer System". PR Newswire. May 27, 1992. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  20. ^ "High Performance Computing & Seismic Imaging". Stanford Exploration Project. Archived from the original on December 24, 2018. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  21. ^ Markoff, John (August 16, 1994). "Thinking Machines to file for bankruptcy". New York Times. Archived from the original on May 9, 2018. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  22. ^ Hillis, W. (1999). "Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine". Physics Today. 42 (2): 78–83. doi:10.1063/1.881196. Archived from the original on December 21, 2012. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  23. ^ "Alums". Stanford University InfoLab. Archived from the original on March 22, 2008. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  24. ^ Stephenson, Neal (2003). In the beginning...was the command line. Perennial. ISBN 9780380815937.
  25. ^ "Danny Hillis named first member of Disney Fellows program". HPC Wire. May 17, 1996. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  26. ^ Bronson, Po (March 1, 1997). "Disney Fellows". Wired. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  27. ^ Hafner, Katie (August 11, 1997). "Disney's Wizards". Newsweek. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  28. ^ Remnick, David (October 20, 1997). "The Next Magic Kingdom, Future Perfect". The New Yorker.
  29. ^ Saunders, Fenella (March 1, 2001). "A giant among robots". Discover. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  30. ^ Jardin, Xeni. "Applied Minds Think Remarkably". wired.com. Wired. Archived from the original on June 4, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  31. ^ Kwan, Carissa (May 11, 2011). "Mayflower Test Satellite, Jointly Developed by Northrop Grumman and Applied Minds, Proves Successful During Recent SpaceX Mission" (Press release). Archived from the original on September 4, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  32. ^ Sabbagh, Leslie (October 3, 2006). "Flying Blind in Iraq: U.S. Helicopters Navigate Real Desert Storms". Popular Mechanics. Archived from the original on September 8, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  33. ^ Tabor, Aimee (February 5, 2007). "New School Will Provide More Learning Opportunities". The Casper Star-Tribune. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  34. ^ Markoff, John (October 17, 2006). "It's a Shipping Container". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  35. ^ Robertson, Jordan (October 17, 2006). "Sun Microsystems Unveils Data Center". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  36. ^ Waldrop, M. Mitchell (August 2007). "Data Center in a Box". Scientific American. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  37. ^ Malik, Om. "Suns's Computing on Demand, Literally". GigaOm. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  38. ^ Scanlon, Jessie (July 2005). "Keep It Down! I'm Trying to Work". Wired. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  39. ^ Markoff, John (May 30, 2005). "No Privacy in Your Cubicle? Try an Electronic Silencer". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  40. ^ Kramer, Melody Joy (December 2005). "Babble: Innovations of the Year". Esquire. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  41. ^ Kimes, Mina (May 25, 2009). "Herman Miller's High-Wire Act". Vol. 159, no. 11. Fortune.
  42. ^ Hall, Peter (June 2007). "Push-Button Rewiring". Metropolis. Archived from the original on September 8, 2015. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  43. ^ Hillis; et al. "Touch driven method and apparatus to integrate and display multiple image layers forming alternate depictions of same subject matter". US Patent 7,724,242. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  44. ^ Ribero, J (July 29, 2013). "US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent". PC World. Archived from the original on May 6, 2018. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  45. ^ Markoff, John (March 9, 2007). "Start-up aims for database to automate web searching". New York Times. Archived from the original on January 16, 2018. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  46. ^ Mellor, Belle (June 7, 2007). "Sharing What Matters". No. 15. The Economist. Archived from the original on January 14, 2018. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  47. ^ Rubin, Courtney. "Metaweb acquired by Google". Inc. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  48. ^ a b "University of Southern California - Physical Sciences in Oncology". Physics.Cancer.gov. Archived from the original on June 13, 2017. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  49. ^ Buchen, Lizzie (July 13, 2010). "Crunching Cancer with Numbers". New Scientist.
  50. ^ Pogrelc, Deanna (August 20, 2013). "Applied Proteomics lands $28M for diagnostics that spot disease by capturing protein activity". Med City News. Retrieved August 20, 2013.
  51. ^ "Applied Proteomics Sells Assets to DiscernDx for $1.85M". GenomeWeb. February 8, 2018. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved July 10, 2020.
  52. ^ "Named Chairs and Professorships - USC Provost". USC.edu. Archived from the original on February 26, 2014. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  53. ^ "USC - Viterbi School of Engineering - Applied Minds Co-Founder Appointed to the Viterbi Research Faculty". Viterbi.USC.edu. Archived from the original on October 20, 2018. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  54. ^ Grossman, Adam. "Dark Sky Has a New Owner". darksky.net. Archived from the original on March 11, 2020. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  55. ^ Kastrenakes, Jacob (April 24, 2015). "The 9 best apps for Apple Watch you can get right now". The Verve. Archived from the original on April 25, 2015. Retrieved April 24, 2015.
  56. ^ Bursztynsky, Jessica (March 31, 2020). "Apple buys popular weather app Dark Sky and plans to shut down Android versions". CNBC.com.
  57. ^ "About Long Now". Archived from the original on June 16, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
  58. ^ "The 10,000 Year Clock". The Long Now Foundation. Archived from the original on January 5, 2018. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
  59. ^ Prize, Dan David. "Daniel Hillis". www.dandavidprize.org. Archived from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
  60. ^ "Danny Hillis Named First Member of Disney Fellows Program". HPCwire. May 17, 1996. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
  61. ^ "Dr. W. Daniel Hillis". NAE Website. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
  62. ^ "ILF DIGEST Roster of ILF Fellows". ILFdigest. February 6, 2012. Archived from the original on February 6, 2012. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
  63. ^ "W. Daniel Hillis". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
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