May 2007

Dear Arvind:

Congratulations on reaching your 60th birthday, with best wishes for many more to come!  This is truly a momentous occasion.  I would also like to offer my greetings to my old friends and colleagues from the CSG.  The technical abilities of this amazing group of people are truly awe inspiring.

I remember my formative years as a graduate student in the Computation Structures Group at MIT as a truly unique experience.  Computer science had reached a stage where it was attracting incredibly talented people but the excitement of an emerging discipline was still quite present.  The emphasis was very much on finding breakthroughs which would revolutionize the field, and the dataflow project was one of the most interesting and ambitious projects in the entire department.

Subsequent environments that I have been in have never captured that same nobility of purpose and level of excitement.  Research in industry is increasingly focused on the bottom line.  In academia, the emphasis is increasingly focused on work which will maximize publications.  Increased pressure to bring in research funding has also negatively affected the environment.

The gathering of all these amazing people today is a fitting tribute to the many things that you have accomplished in your illustrious career.

Sincerely,
Arun Iyengar