Caltech Associate Professor of Computer Science Peter Schroeder Receives Packard Foundation Fellowship

PASADENA--A Caltech computer scientist who specializes in wavelet-based methods for creating computer graphics has been awarded a $625,000 grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Peter Schroeder, an associate professor of computer science, is the newest in a list of 12 Caltech recipients of the Packard award. He plans to use the money largely for funding additional graduate students and postdocs, as well as for acquiring workstations.

Schroeder's work focuses on efficient ways to parse large data sets. Specifically, his work involves finding ways for personal and home computers to work on problems previously reserved for supercomputers.

"The theme of my research is to find efficient algorithms for a number of problems you would encounter in scientific computing and computer graphics," Schroeder says. "I am not trying to solve specific problems, rather I work on techniques to solve whole classes of problems."

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation of Los Altos, California, first awarded the Fellowships in Science and Engineering in 1988. The goals of the fellowship program are to support outstanding young faculty as they build productive research programs and to help attract and retain faculty of the highest quality for our universities. With the announcement of the 24 recipients for 1998, the foundation has awarded a total of 224 fellowships. A Caltech faculty member has been honored with a Fellowship every year since the inception of the program.

Founded in 1891, Caltech has an enrollment of some 2,000 students, and a faculty of about 280 professorial members and 130 research members. The Institute has more than 19,000 alumni. Caltech employs a staff of more than 1,700 on campus and 5,300 at JPL.

Over the years, 27 Nobel Prizes and four Crafoord Prizes have been awarded to faculty members and alumni. Forty-three Caltech faculty members and alumni have received the National Medal of Science; and eight alumni (two of whom are also trustees), two additional trustees, and one faculty member have won the National Medal of Technology. Since 1958, 13 faculty members have received the annual California Scientist of the Year award.

On the Caltech faculty there are 75 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and on the faculty and Board of Trustees, 68 members of the National Academy of Sciences and 46 members of the National Academy of Engineering.