The Fr. Norm Choate Distinguished Graduate
Award and Lecture

This year's recipient is
Dr. James (Jim) Mitchell
(BSC '66)

This year's recipient is Dr. James (Jim) Mitchell (BSC '66). He and his wife, Judy Wainwright, attended the reunion of graduates from the 1960s, where he was honoured for a forty-five year career that has involved ground-breaking research in computer programming and technology. Born in Kitchener Waterloo in 1943, Jim grew up in Galt, commuting to attend St. Jerome's High School. He lived at St. Jerome's College during much of his time at the University of Waterloo.

His early fascination with computer programming resulted in his involvement, along with three other students, in a revolutionary development that helped establish UW as an international centre for computing excellence: the creation of the first WATFOR compiler. Jim graduated in 1966 with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and pursued postgraduate studies, receiving a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In 1980-81 he was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge University Computing Laboratory and, in 1997, he received the J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation from the University of Waterloo. Jim has been head of research and development for Acorn Computers (U.K.), President of the Acorn Research Center in Palo Alto, California and a Xerox Fellow from 1971-84 at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

Since 1988, he has been a senior researcher and administrator with Sun Microsystems in Palo Alto. He has been the Vice-President of Technology & Architecture in the JavaSoft Division; Chief Technology Officer, Java Consumer & Embedded products and Vice President in charge of Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Jim is currently a Sun Fellow and Vice President of Sun's High Productivity Computing Systems Research project under contract with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) which explores novel approaches to the hardware and software total system design leading to the next generation of supercomputers.

Fr. Norm Choate sent a message congratulating Jim on the award, confessing that, "that at the time you were involved withinventing WATFOR I did not have a clue as to what you were doing and the cyber world is still a mystery to me but a mystery for whichI am profoundly grateful. Thank you for your contribution to information technology and your contribution to the millions of computer novices like me. I am very proud that you have been selected for this award."