Lawrence (Larry) A. Rowe

Founding director of the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center (BMRC), Rowe is a computer scientist who served as a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley from 1976 to 2003, and has remained actively involved in multimedia research projects involving streaming media, distributed collaboration, teaching and learning, and database management systems and tools. He taught classes on multimedia systems and applications, user interfaces, programming languages and compilers, and computer programming. He joined FX Palo Alto Laboratories (FXPAL) as President in 2007.

The BMRC was created in 1995 to explore the application of multimedia technology to education and research. BMRC taught classes on multimedia authoring, established and operated authoring studios and distributed collaboration and distance learning rooms and services, and provided advice and technical support on a wide range of issues relating to multimedia authoring and distributed collaboration. A major BMRC accomplishment was the development and deployment of the Berkeley Webcasting System, which produced over 30 hours a week of Berkeley course lectures that were viewed over 300K times per month by people anywhere on the Internet. The BMRC research activities ended in 2003 due to a lack of funding and support, though the Berkeley Webcasting System continued to be operated by the campus.

His research interests include development tools for database applications, distributed operating systems, computer networks (e.g., multicast protocols and applications), distributed streaming media toolkits, multimedia applications (e.g., Video-on-Demand, webcasting, videoconferencing, multimedia authoring, etc.), and computer-integrated manufacturing. Rowe received a BA degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Information and Computer Science from the University of California at Irvine in 1970 and 1976, respectively.

Rowe is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), has served as past chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia (1998–2003), and has been a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). Rowe has also served on many governmental advisory committees and is a co-founder of the original Ingres Corporation (1980–1990) and NCast Corporation.