Brett Helsel, a friend of UW CSE for nearly 30 years, died last week at age 54 after suffering a cardiac arrest while paddle boarding on Lake Washington.
Brett is best known for leading the engineering teams at Seattle’s F5 Networks (1998-2003) and Isilon Systems (2008-2012). His history with UW CSE, though, goes back to the late 1980s, when he was an engineer with Digital Equipment Corporation. Working with UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska, Brett arranged for DEC to donate equipment to 8 of UW’s top junior faculty members in a wide range of scientific disciplines, making it possible for them to collect their National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Awards, which required an industrial match.
Brett’s memorial service will be held on July 24th at 2 p.m. at the University Presbyterian Church in Seattle’s University District.
Read about Brett in GeekWire here.