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MIT receives $1 million pledge from Lockheed Martin for software learning

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- ;Reinforcing its commitment to technology, the Lockheed Martin Corporation has pledged $1 million to create the Lockheed Martin Software Learning Center at MIT. The Center will be located in a new complex of buildings to be named for Maria and Ray Stata, the founder and chairman of Analog Devices.

Because the use of state-of-the-art software is so pervasive in all of the modern systems developed by Lockheed Martin, company officials have gone so far as to refer to the firm as "a software company in disguise." Software technology employs the largest segment of scientists and engineers of any discipline in Lockheed Martin.

A check for $250,000 will be presented to MIT by William Ballhaus Jr., Lockheed Martin vice president for science and engineering, on January 29 at 4pm in the Emma Savage Rogers Room (Building 10, Room 340 on the MIT campus). The remainder of the gift will be donated over the next three years.

Dr. Ballhaus will be accompanied by a delegation from Lockheed Martin that includes Paul W. Hoff, an MIT graduate who is director of the Microelectronics Center Operations, Sanders/Lockheed Martin in Nashua, NH. Dr. Hoff was the matchmaker between MIT and Lockheed Martin in arranging the gift.

In proposing that Lockheed Martin sponsor the Learning Center last August, MIT noted the mutual interest both have in assuring "the highest quality of education in software technology."

To achieve this goal, the proposal suggests that Lockheed Martin sponsor a facility that can be used for software classes and a training center that has video-conferencing capability which can be upgraded to accommodate future interactive video/multimedia formats. Work areas will have high performance network connections and multimedia interfaces. In addition, shared interactive learning and development will be possible as a result of reconfigurable work groups.

Dean Robert A. Brown of the MIT School of Engineering will accept the donation. Also representing MIT at the ceremony will be Professor Paul L. Penfield, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Professor Michael V. Guttag, EECS associate department head for computer science; Professor Jeffrey H. Shapiro, EECS associate department head for electrical engineering; and Professor Edward F. Crawley, head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Lockheed Martin and MIT have a long-standing relationship that involves projects supported by the Advanced Telecommunications/Information Distribution Research Program (run by the Army Research Federated Laboratory) and the University Research Consortium of the Idaho National Engineering and Environment Laboratory.

The 300,000-square-foot Stata complex, expected to be designed by the internationally renowned architecture firm of Frank Gehry & Associates, will adjoin the Sherman Fairchild Building on Vassar Street. It is scheduled for completion in 2001.

The computer science faculty will be located in the complex along with the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS), the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

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