SixBoysJ

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Randy Pausch

In the 1980's I attended Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as a undergraduate on Mathematics.  I followed that with two stints as a Staff Researchers, first in the Psychology Department and them with the Camelot group in the Computer Science Department.    I spent three years working with a group of stellar doctoral students.  They got their degrees while I earned a living and learned about systems and software engineering.

One of our students was Randy Pausch.  He arrived in 1982 and received his PhD in 1988 and went on to bigger things.  Randy came back to CMU and created a program called the Entertainment Technology degreee which merges Virtual Reality, Computer gaming, Art and Industrial Design.

Randy is one of my heros.  He found a way to do cool, fun things in Computer Science without treating it as Applied Mathematics.

The bad news is that in September 1006,  Randy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  The doctors don't give him much more time.

This fall, Randy gave a last talk at CMU.  

I'm very sad that I have not been in touch with Randy and the others from those years.  I wish him health and happiness.



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