Ken Kennedy 1945-2007
 Ken Kennedy, founder of Rice University's nationally ranked computer science program and one of the world's foremost experts on high-performance computing, died Feb. 7 at a Houston hospital after a long battle with cancer. He was 61.
"Rice has lost one of its great intellectual leaders and a great human being," Rice President David Leebron said. "Ken Kennedy early on realized the power of computers to address real problems that confront people and the Earth. He leaves a great legacy for Rice and for mankind."
In his 36-year career, Kennedy, a member of the elite National Academy of Engineering, helped Rice become one of the nation's leading academic centers for computational research and education. He founded the Department of Computer Science in 1984, the Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI) in 1987, the Center for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC) in 1989, and the Center for High Performance Software Research (HiPerSoft) in 2000.
"Ken was incredibly dedicated to Rice, and dedicated his career to developing computing research at Rice," said CITI Director Moshe Vardi. "If Rice is famous today for its computing research, it is due to Ken Kennedy."
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ranked Rice's computer engineering program No. 2 in the nation based on a scholarly productivity analysis by researchers at the State University of New York.
"Ken was a beloved and valuable faculty member in every dimension -- mentoring, strategic vision, education and research," said Sallie Keller-McNulty, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering.
In 1997, Kennedy was chosen to co-chair the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), a congressionally mandated committee charged with advising the president, Congress and federal agencies on advanced information technology. The panel's 1999 report urged U.S. leaders to increase spending for computing research by more than $1 billion, and it served as a catalyst for increased IT research support.
Kennedy's connection to Rice ran deep and began when he was an undergraduate mathematics major. "Like most people who have been to Rice, I have developed a strong attachment for it," he said in a 1986 interview. "My father was in the military, and we moved 16 times by the time I graduated from high school. Rice was the first place at which I had spent more than three years."
Kennedy graduated summa cum laude in 1967 and returned just four years later after earning one of the first doctorates in computer science awarded by New York University.
“Ken had a rare balance in many dimensions,” said Sidney Burrus, Maxfield and Oshman Professor Emeritus of Engineering and former dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering. “He could see the fine detail and the grand vision. He could develop abstract theory and important applications. He could appreciate the highly personal and the totally objective. He could balance the living of life with contributing to life.”
Kennedy served on countless academic and administrative panels. He helped raise $45 million for computational engineering in Rice's last major fundraising campaign, and he led the effort to build Anne and Charles Duncan Hall, the 113,000-square-foot building that became home to Rice's computational programs in 1996.
Kennedy will perhaps be best remembered at Rice for his love of students and teaching. He was a Ph.D. adviser to 38 students, mentored many others, and continued to teach undergraduate courses long after he became prominent in his field.
In 1988, Kennedy led a group of computer scientists from seven leading research institutions in a proposal to establish the NSF-funded CRPC, one of the first NSF Science and Technology Centers. CRPC later became HiPerSoft, which Kennedy directed from its inception. HiPerSoft is the Rice administrative home for several multi-institution projects, including the Virtual Grid Application Development Software (GrADS) Project, an NSF-sponsored effort involving seven universities, and the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute (LACSI), a consortium of five universities and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Kennedy was promoted to Rice's highest academic rank, University Professor, in 2002. At the time of his death, he held joint appointments as the John and Ann Doerr Professor in Computational Engineering in Computer Science and as a professor in electrical and computer engineering.
In 2003, the Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (ACM SIGPLAN) compiled a selection of the 50 most influential papers written between 1979 and 1999. Few researchers had more than one.
Kennedy had five, and three of his former students, including Cooper and Rice's Linda Torczon, had two or more.
Kennedy authored more than 200 technical articles and two books. He was a fellow of the ACM, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Kennedy is survived by his wife, Carol Quillen, Rice's vice provost for academic affairs; stepdaughter, Caitlin; father, retired Army Brig. Gen. Kenneth Kennedy Sr.; and sister, Susan Kennedy.
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