In a special ceremony on the University of Michigan campus Thursday (Oct. 5), Computerworld Smithsonian Awards will recognize 18 U-M projects that use computer technology in innovative ways. Carl Berger, U-M director of advanced academic technology, and Dan Morrow, Computerworld Smithsonian Awards executive director, will speak at the 1 p.m. ceremony in the Alumni Center. A reception will follow.

[Map of Central Campus. Alumni Center #17, near middle] As year 2000 laureates in the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards program, all 18 projects will join the Smithsonian Institution’s Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology. Along with 426 other projects from around the world, they were formally inducted during an April ceremony on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The U-M projects are the work of faculty, researchers and staff from the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Design, College of Pharmacy; the School of Dentistry; the Division of Kinesiology; the Law School; the School of Business Administration; the Medical School, the School of Education, the School of Social Work, and the School of Nursing. Project descriptions will be available at the ceremony.

Founded in 1989, the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards program recognizes projects that use advanced technologies to “address real problems, affecting real people, in the real world.” To document and provide access to these examples, the awards program maintains an online archive of oral histories, transcripts, images, artifacts and case studies at http://innovate.si.edu/home.html (click on “search” for the 2000 collection).

Computerworld Smithsonian AwardsMap of Central Campushttp://innovate.si.edu/home.html