People Of The Times

• Mark Moir, an assistant professor of computer science, was one of of 20 faculty members chosen to receive a Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) for the 1997-98 academic year. The grants of $5,000 are intended to allow faculty members from ORAU member institutions to enhance their research careers. Each recipient's institution matches the ORAU award with an additional $5,000.
• Moir's research involves transparent support for efficient, wait-free transactions in shared memory multiprocessors. The use of locking in multiprocessor applications can cause performance bottlenecks, priority inversion, and susceptibility to failures. Moir aims to eliminate these problems through transparent mechanisms for incorporating wait-free implementations ensure that processes are never caused to wait by the delay of other processes.