Hillis was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for advances in parallel computers, parallel software, and parallel storage.
More recently, Hillis co-founded Applied Minds[2] and Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists, and artists.[3] He is a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab.[4]
Biography
Early life and academic work
Born September 25, 1956, in Baltimore, Maryland, Danny Hillis spent much of his childhood living overseas, in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
At Thinking Machines, he built a team of scientists, designers, and engineers, including people in the field as well as those who later became leaders and innovators in multiple industries. The team included Sydney Brenner, Richard Feynman,[23]Brewster Kahle, and Eric Lander.
In 1996, Hillis joined The Walt Disney Company in the newly created role of Disney Fellow[25] and as Vice President, Research and Development at Disney Imagineering.[26] He developed new technologies and business strategies for Disney's theme parks, television, motion pictures, and consumer products businesses.[27][28] He also designed new theme park rides, a full-sized walking dinosaur,[29] and various micro mechanical devices.
In 2000, Hillis co-founded the R&D think-tank Applied Minds with his Disney colleague Bran Ferren. Minds is a team of engineers, scientists, and designers that provide design and technology services for clients. The creative environment and the diverse projects it undertook gained Applied Minds abundant media attention. "It's as if Willy Wonka's chocolate factory just yawned wide to welcome us. Only here, all the candy plugs in," said an article in Wired magazine.[30] Work done at the firm covered the range of industries and application domains, including satellites,[31] helicopters,[32] and educational facilities.[33]
While at Applied Minds, Hillis designed and built a large-scale computer data center for Sun Microsystems (the Sun Modular Datacenter) that would fit into a standard 20-foot shipping container,[34][35] solving, among others, the problems of accommodating processor capacity, cooling, power requirements, and storage[36] within a uniquely portable solution. This type of "datacenter in a box," has now become a common method for building large data centers.[37]
For Herman Miller, Hillis designed an audio privacy solution[38][39] based on phonetic jumbling—Babble[40]—which was received in the media as a version of the Cone of Silence, and was marketed through a new company, Sonare. Also for Herman Miller, Hillis developed a flexible reconfigurable power and lighting system,[41][42] which was marketed through another new company, Convia.
As part of an early touchscreen map table interface, Hillis invented and patented the use of multiple touch points to control a zoom interface, which is now called "pinch to zoom.".[43] One of these patents was the basis for the USPTO decision[44] to reject Apple Inc.'s claim on a "pinch-to-zoom" patent in its legal dispute with Samsung, on the grounds that it was described in the Hillis patent.
In 2012, Hillis helped to create a research program on cancer and proteomics as Professor of Research Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and the principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute's Physical Sciences in Oncology Laboratory at USC.[48] He co-founded Applied Proteomics (API)[14] with David Agus to make proteomics-based biomarker discovery practical.[49] Hillis and his colleagues at API developed one of the first protein biomarker discovery platforms and a blood test for early stage colon cancer, but they were unable to convince investors to finance taking their proteomic technology to the market.[50][51]
Hillis has academic appointments as the Judge Widney Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Southern California,[52] Professor of Research Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and Research Professor of Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.[53] He was the first principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute's Physical Sciences in Oncology Laboratory at USC.[48]
Applied Invention
In 2015, Hillis co-founded Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists, and artists. Applied Invention develops technology solutions in partnership with other companies and entrepreneurs.
In 1986, Hillis expressed the alarm that society has a "mental barrier" of looking at the year 2000 as the limit of the future.[57] He proposed a long-term project to overcome this—a mechanical clock that would last 10,000 years. This project became the initial project of The Long Now Foundation, which he co-founded with Stewart Brand and where he serves as co-chairman. A prototype of the Clock of the Long Now is on display at the London Science Museum. A full-scale mechanical clock is being installed at a site inside a mountain in western Texas.[58]
Awards
Hillis is the recipient of the inaugural Dan David Prize for shaping and enriching society and public life in 2002,[59] the 1991 Spirit of American Creativity Award for his inventions,[60] the 1989 Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions to computer science,[13] and the 1988 Ramanujan Award for his work in applied mathematics.
^"Tinkertoy Computer". Computer History Museum. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
^ abc"William Daniel Hillis". Award Winners. Association for Computing Machinery. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
^Markoff, John (October 17, 2006). "It's a Shipping Container". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
^Waldrop, M. Mitchell (August 2007). "Data Center in a Box". Scientific American. Archived from the original on August 30, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
^Mellor, Belle (June 7, 2007). "Sharing What Matters". No. 15. The Economist. Archived from the original on January 14, 2018. Retrieved December 31, 2017.