« Washington Engineer - May 2005
Local couple establishes new endowed chair for Computer Science & Engineering
The generosity of a local philanthropic couple has established a new endowed chair in the UW Department of Computer Science & Engineering that officials say will help keep the excellence of the faculty and students on par with the department’s new facilities.
Ben Slivka and Lisa Wissner-Slivka’s gift of $1 million has created the Wissner-Slivka Endowed Chair in Computer Science & Engineering. The gift qualified for an additional $500,000 from Campaign UW’s matching fund program, making for a total endowment of $1.5 million.
The first holder of the chair is Professor Hank Levy.
Slivka said he and his wife are glad to be in a position to support the excellent programs that CSE offers.
“We have been very impressed by the quality of the faculty and students at CSE and the diverse areas of research they are pursuing,” Slivka said. “As two people who have been incredibly fortunate in the field of computer science, the ability to support UW CSE with this chair was a wonderful opportunity for us and for our foundation.”
Department Chair David Notkin added that the gift is an example of the expanding investment that CSE is seeing in faculty and student support since the department took up residence in its new home, the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.
“Ben Slivka and Lisa Wissner-Slivka are helping to create CSE’s future,” Notkin said. “We have enormous gratitude for their generous support.”
Slivka is a Seattle native and graduate of Garfield High School. Both he and Wissner-Slivka both graduated from Northwestern University with bachelor’s degrees in computer science. Slivka also earned a master’s in computer science at Northwestern, and Wissner-Slivka holds an MBA from the UW.
Both are Microsoft alums. Wissner-Slivka worked at the company for six years as a program manager and product manager on programming language tools and electronic mail applications.
Slivka worked at Microsoft from 1985 to 1999. He established the Internet Explorer team and led the group through the release of Internet Explorer 3.0.
The couple established the Wissner-Slivka Foundation in 1997 to support educational initiatives.