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The Professional Achievement Award recognizes outstanding achievement in any professional field. This award honors alumni whose achievements in their fields have brought distinction to themselves as well as credit to the university.
B.S. and M.S. Computer Science (’96), George Mason University; Ph.D. Computer Science (’01), Illinois Institute of Technology
Chowdhury is a researcher, inventor, and entrepreneur. He was chief architect of search for AOL from 2000–06. In 2006 he co-founded the search engine Summize and in 2008 became chief scientist of Twitter upon its purchase of Summize that year. In 2010 he co-founded the Alta Vista School, an elementary school in San Francisco that focuses on STEM education. The following year, he left Twitter and co-founded the company Pushd, which develops contextual mobile applications and in September 2014 released Steven, an emoji-based social app. Chowdhury has launched more than 20 commercial products, has 36 patents, and has authored more than 100 scientific publications and a book chapter.
Russell Betts, dean of IIT College of Science, nominated Chowdhury for helping “to change the world with his innovative search and retrieval technologies.”
Says Chowdhury, “Most computer scientists are born. You just wake up and start building a computer one day and realize that you can do stuff with these machines—the actualization of an idea and then having something that’s real. Think about a building; building a building is really hard. Now think about code and what this computer can do for you—writing that is a tractable problem—and all of the sudden you can start doing things to make the world a better place, a different place.”
Chowdhury says he constantly asks himself what he could do to make the world a better place. “How do I make it closer to a place that I would want to live in? So you’re constantly building things that you think are valuable—not only to yourself, but also to other people. The school that I co-founded is a perfect example of that (we call it a “STEAM” school because we don’t forget the arts).”
“I am enamored with how technology brings people together. It’s a great way for humans to make the world a better place for the next generation.”
Read more about the 2015 Alumni Awards.