Jerome Cox, Jonathan Turner to receive 2011 Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Recognized for turning their discoveries into commercial enterprises that have brought benefit to others

Jerome R. Cox Jr., ScD, senior professor, and Jonathan S. Turner, PhD, the Barbara J. and Jerome R. Cox, Jr. Professor, both in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, have been selected to receive the 2011 Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, announced Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.

They will receive the award during the Faculty Achievement Awards ceremony at 6 p.m. Dec. 3 in Simon Hall Auditorium. A gala immediately follows in the Danforth University Center.

“Professors Turner and Cox are extremely deserving of this important recognition,” Wrighton says. “Both are highly regarded for their path-breaking research in engineering, but both also should be commended for their ability to turn their discoveries into commercial enterprises that have brought benefit to others.”

The Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship was first presented last year to Jack H. Ladenson, PhD, the Oree M. Carroll and Lillian B. Ladenson Professor of Clinical Chemistry in Pathology and Immunology and professor of clinical chemistry in medicine.

The award stems from the university’s involvement in entrepreneurship and technology transfer and is given to a faculty member whose research has led to the successful development of an idea or business that has brought great benefit to others.

Jonathan S. Turner

Turner, who is internationally recognized for his accomplishments in computer networks and telecommunications, has helped enable today’s Internet.

Turner

Turner’s early work on high-performance packet-switching systems and networks played a central role in the development of Asynchronous Transfer Mode technology, a flexible, reliable and efficient communications technology that was developed to enable voice, data and video applications to co-exist in a common, high-quality communications infrastructure.

With colleagues Cox and Guru M. Parulkar, PhD, a former computer science and engineering professor, Turner has led a series of major research projects that has contributed to the development of high-performance network technology and multimedia applications.

In 1997, the three founded Growth Networks, a successful startup company, which developed high-performance switching components for Internet routers. In 2000, they sold the company to Cisco Systems Inc. for $350 million in Cisco stock. The transaction became a model for technology-transfer initiatives at WUSTL.

Turner has been awarded 30 patents for his work on switching systems and he has authored many widely cited publications.

Before being named to the Cox professorship in 2006, Turner was WUSTL’s Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering. He joined the engineering school in 1983 as an assistant professor of computer science and served as department chair from 1992-97.

He is one of WUSTL’s first dual-degree graduates, earning bachelor’s degrees in computer science and electrical engineering in 1977. He also earned a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College.

After his graduation, he went to work at Bell Laboratories, while continuing his graduate studies at Northwestern University, earning a master’s (1979) and doctorate (1982) in computer science.

Jerome R. Cox Jr.

Cox is a leader in the application of advanced technology for introducing new treatments in biomedical engineering. Like Turner, he is dedicated to the transfer of innovative achievements in the laboratory to biomedical solutions in practice.

Cox

With his research team, Cox has developed new computer methods for CT and PET scanners that improve the diagnosis of cancers and cardiovascular disease. His innovations were instrumental in developing early monitors for detecting heart rhythm disturbances.

While a member of the team that designed and developed new high-speed switching technology during the 1990s, Cox held the Welge professorship from 1989 to 1998.

Cox, who has been at WUSTL since 1955 after graduating from MIT, founded the Biomedical Computing Laboratory in 1964.

Cox is responsible for bringing the Laboratory Instrument Computer, known as LINC — along with its development team — to Washington University in 1964. LINC, which was developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory in 1962, is a contender for the title of the first personal computer because of its size and adaptability.

Applications for LINC began to diversify after the group arrived at WUSTL, expanding to include computer-assisted planning of radiation treatments, monitoring of heart arrhythmias, rendering of radiological imaging data and understanding of the molecular properties of new drugs.

In 1975, Cox became founding chairman of the Department of Computer Science, and guided the department’s development and growth for more than 15 years.

Most recently, Cox has launched a new company, Blendics Inc., which makes Computer-Aided Design software that aids in the development of asynchronous computing systems.

Cox, who earned bachelor’s (1947), master’s (1949) and doctoral degrees (1954) in electrical engineering from MIT, was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from Washington University in 2001.

Also during the Faculty Achievement Awards ceremony, Erik Trinkaus, PhD, the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences and professor of biological anthropology, will receive the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award, and Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD, the Sam J. and Audrey Loew Levin Chair for Research in Arthritis and director of the Medical Scientist Training Program, will receive the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award.