FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: News Media contact: January 3, 2000 Rosemary Kimball at (202) 418-0500 DAVID J. FARBER NAMED FCC CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST Washington, DC David J. Farber, currently the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named Chief Technologist for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). William E. Kennard, chairman of the FCC, welcomed Farber noting, "The FCC, and, indeed, the entire country, are very fortunate to have the services of such a distinguished, world-class technology expert as Dave Farber at this time, as the FCC continues to tackle the complicated and increasingly technical issues involved in ensuring universal broadband access." Farber holds appointments in the Computer and Information Science and Electrical Engineering Departments at Penn. He is Director of both the Center for Communications & Information Science & Policy and the Laboratory for Distributed Systems, where he is leading research in ultra-high speed networking, the design of innovative distributed computer architecture, and distributed collaboration methodology. He was previously with the University of Delaware, the University of California in Irvine, Scientific Data Systems, the Rand Corporation, and the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Farber is a Fellow of the IEEE and is the holder of the 1995 SIGCOMM Award for lifelong contributions to the field. In 1998 he received the John Scott Award for contributions to Humanity. Earlier recipients have included Albert Einstein, G. Marconi, Madam Curie, the Wright brothers, and Thomas Edison. - FCC -