Tech Would Grow Three Times Faster If It Drew on Talents of Women, Minorities


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By John Templeton, syndicated columnist, January 15, 2000. (Photos supplied by the webmaster and Tech Museum of Innovation)

SAN JOSE--The high technology industry would grow three times faster if it did not ignore the two-thirds of Americans who are women and minorities, according to one of the world's top computer scientists.

Dr. Philip Emeagwali, the only individual to ever win the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineer's Gordon Bell Prize, told the National Society of Black Engineers-Silicon Valley at the Tech Museum of Innovation that each new scientist produces, on average, a $20 million benefit to the American economy. His own scientific discovery, ironically, resulted from discrimination.

As a graduate student using supercomputers to solve one of the 20 great mathematics challenges -- improving the recovery from oil fields, he applied for a supercomputer account seven times, but was refused a password when he showed up in person. "I even sent a white colleague to pick it up, but when they realized it was for my use, they refused him," said Emeagwali.

So, he broke down his four-dimensional equations, too complex to calculate manually, into 65,000 parts and used the NSFNet in the late 1980s to use 65,000 different processors to solve the problem. "Seymour Cray, the founder of Cray supercomputers, said in the New York Times two months before my discovery that no one could program massively parallel computing," added Emeagwali. "But I found that using those processors made it 65,000 times faster with the result of the fastest computation ever. Likewise, high tech would grow faster if it used the talents of more people."



The Cray model T3E supercomputer. The original Cray supercomputers were designed with four powerful processors (oxen). Today's most powerful computers, including Crays, are designed with thousands of inexpensive processors (chicken).

Now, all supercomputers are designed using Emeagwali's chickens-over-oxen theory. "I proved that thousands of chickens can pull more than a few big oxen," he added. Oil field recovery is up and petroleum prices are down because of Emeagwali's discoveries.



The cart pulled by the ox represents a conventional supercomputer. Intuition might lead one to think that the bull can outperform the cart pulled by a multitude of well-trained, harnessed chickens. But the coordination of many smaller units results in better performance. Similarly, a massively parallel computer is faster and more powerful than a conventional supercomputer.

Emeagwali toured Northern California as part of the Programming Pioneers tour sponsored by (http://www.blackmoney.com/pages/cafe.html) JobCAFE, a recruitment service created to eradicate the "Silicon Ceiling" of employment discrimination in high technology industries. He spoke at Cordova Villa Elementary School in Rancho Cordova, Martin Luther King Middle and Thurgood Marshall High Schools in San Francisco, when he told students that he had learned mathematics in a Biafrian refugee camp in his native Nigeria. His father had required him to solve 100 mathematics problems each day, in less than one hour. The Biafran civil war had forced Emeagwali to drop out of school in the eighth grade, but he continued to self-study while in the refugee camp.

The scientist connects through his web site http://www.emeagwali.com to more than 6,000 schools each week in order to encourage new scientists. "This is the kind of outreach that high tech companies should be engaging in," he added. "Most of the school children I speak to have never seen a scientist or a computer engineer. There is no way they will aspire to be one unless they have that exposure."

Emeagwali's notoriety has gained him one dubious distinction. He discovered that his name comes up in white hate group web sites more than any other African or African-American. "It seems they always like to ask the question, 'What scientific discoveries have come out of Africa or African-Americans?' and my name is part of the rebuttal."

JobCAFE's speaker series has included such scientific notables as Dr. George Campbell, CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering; Mike Beasley, COO of Icing Software and chairman of Mathematics Engineering and Science Achievement (MESA), and Lori Perine, senior policy advisor for computing, information and communications in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Future events include an exhibit of African-American science pioneers at the California Academy of Science in San Francisco in February and a series of high tech CEO appearances at Howard University in March.

JobCAFE produced the report Silicon Ceiling: Solutions for Closing the Digital Divide, which reviewed hiring practices at 253 high technology firms in Northern California and found a dramatic underrepresentation of blacks and Latinos compared to more than 770,000 blacks and Latinos working in high tech professions nationally. Fewer than 4,000 blacks and Latinos were employed as professionals by the companies out of 140,000 employees.




Reported by John Templeton (a syndicated columnist).



John Templeton (center) introduces Philip Emeagwali and Peter Giles (President and CEO of the Tech Museum of Innovation at Silicon Valley, California)



Philip Emeagwali, John Templeton and Peter Giles



Philip Emeagwali touring the Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, California (January 15, 2000)



Philip Emeagwali addressing members of the National Society of Black Engineers (Silicon Valley chapter, January 15, 2000)
(L-R) Cory Northington, Jean-Celestin Y. Noubeyo, Kevin Jones, Barry Jackson and his son.



Philip Emeagwali with the officers of the National Society of Black Engineers (Silicon Valley chapter, January 15, 2000)
(L-R) Tamecia Jordan, Vice Chair; Eloise Jackson; Philip Emeagwali; Eric Harris, Chair; Cory Northington, Communications Chair; and Natasha Ratler, Membership Chair.




Philip Emeagwali, biography, A Father of the Internet, supercomputer pioneer, Nigerian scientist, inventor

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Philip Emeagwali, biography, A Father of the Internet, supercomputer pioneer, Nigerian scientist, inventor