Bruce Maggs jostles for the lead early in the School of Computer Science's 1994 annual 5K race. The professor eventually fades from the pace and finishes in 14th place before keeling over in a Schenley Park mud puddle. One of his students, Anja Feldmann (below), rides with him in the ambulance to the hospital. "I think," Maggs chuckles in retrospect, "she was a little concerned that her advisor was going to die."
After IV fluids rehydrate him, he can go home. But Maggs can't bring himself to walk out of the hospital caked in filth. "Anja went out to the car where a friend had come to pick us up," says Maggs (now at Duke University), "and talked him into handing over all his clothes."
Feldmann (CS'91, '95) is renowned among computer scientists for her tenacity.
Now dean of Berlin Technical University's computer science and electrical engineering department, she leads Telekom Laboratories, a joint project with German phone company Deutsche Telekom. "We are trying" Feldmann explains, "to identify bottlenecks in the current Internet to propose new methods in which the flow of data can be improved." Such research is vital to keep the Internet from collapsing under the ever-expanding loads of new devices and services.
Her work—as a scholar and leader in computer networking research—recently earned her the German Research Foundation's highest honor, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award. The prize comes with €2.5 million ($3.5 million) to advance her research.
—William Abernathy
