Bill Gates Speaks to UI Students

Bill Gates, the chief software architect for Microsoft, chose Illinois for his first stop on a three-day, five campus tour to promote computer science and engineering to students. Illinois is the only public university that is part of this tour. His February 24th talk, titled "Software breakthroughs: Solving the toughest problems in computer science", was designed to highlight work being done at Microsoft, universities and research labs around the world.

Gates started his presentation by mentioning that Microsoft hires more computer science graduates from Illinois than from any other university. He also mentioned that the Millenium Scholars program, which is one of his philanthropic efforts, currently funds 25 students at the U of I. This program provides need-based financial support for minority undergraduate and graduate students.

Gates commented on the computer being the most powerful tool ever created and mentioned that storage capacity is increasing at an even faster rate than transistor chip power as storage capacity is doubling roughly every 14 months and chip power is doubling roughly every two years. In Gates's view, "Software is where the action is," and software will allow the greatest opportunities for increasing effectiveness in the future.

He talked about innovations that are underway at Microsoft including a Smart Watch that could provide access to email, stock quotes, weather, calendars, etc. and a Portable Media Center that would offer new options for consuming media such as music and television. He also mentioned the concept of future computer screens being like papyrus so they could be unrolled for portability. In fielding a question from a student about the emerging technology with the greatest potential impact, Gates replied that this was the concept of a natural interface that would allow for digital recording as we speak or write.

Gates stressed the importance of research as the driver of software development and stated that the U.S. leads this process worldwide. Microsoft budgets $6.8 billion for R and D and has collaborated with the Department of Computer Science on several projects including Gaia (interfaces to control voice recognition, video recognition and tracking software) and e-Fuzion (a wireless, graphics tablet that allows pen-based, projected drawing).

Before the talk, Gates met with some engineering faculty to discuss issues pertaining to trustworthy computing. Both the College of Engineering and Microsoft are focused on security issues such as the use of smart cards instead of passwords, fire walls, and monitoring systems for abnormal behavior. Gates also talked about the importance of wireless technology, particularly for countries that can't support infrastructure components like cable. The College of Engineering is also leading this effort in collaboration with corporations such as Vodafone.

Story contributed by Rene Mullen, College of Engineering

Full text of the speech is at www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/02-24UnivIllinois.asp