News Article

Professor Kothari wins two prestigious Prometheus Awards

 

Ames, Iowa—Suraj Kothari, professor of electrical and computer engineering, has received two Prometheus Awards from the Technology Association of Iowa. He received one award for Innovation in Teaching, and his software company, EnSoft Corp., was named Innovator of the Year. The Prometheus Awards recognize outstanding contributions Iowa individuals and information technology companies have made to the industry, community, and state. Both awards were announced at a ceremony March 4 in Altoona, Iowa.

“I’ve been working on this for 14 years, and the awards helped me realize my teaching potential,” Kothari says. “It’s great to be rewarded like this. I know my hard work has paid off.”

Kothari was nominated for these awards because of his recent personal accomplishments in teaching, as well as the successful development in his start-up software engineering company, EnSoft Corp. Kothari helped start the College of Engineering’s and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ new software engineering program, which launched in 2007. Kothari teaches courses in software engineering, parallel computing, and operating systems. His nomination for the award focused on his innovative teaching in software engineering; he introduced two novel courses at Iowa State, one a graduate course and the other for undergraduates.

His company, EnSoft, was established in 2002 to create tools to address challenges that software engineers and programmers encounter. The tools help eliminate human errors in monotonous manual processing and programming tasks.

Many companies have shown interest in EnSoft’s tools, which are based on the Knowledge Centric Software (KCS) technology that Kothari and his team developed. KCS tools can be used in the automotive, avionic, and software industries to analyze and transform software efficiently and quickly. These tools also help spot errors in software and analyze software defects and security vulnerabilities. Software companies also can use KCS tools to analyze system-level software by assessing the design and security of a system.

SimDiff, the company’s first tool, works to find differences in control systems software, such as anti-lock brakes, elevators, and toasters. Caterpillar, Chrysler, Honeywell, Rockwell Collins, Siemens, and Toyota have purchased SimDiff. EnSoft’s second product, Atlas, analyzes software code to understand how the code works and reduce errors. Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and Motorola have demonstrated an interest in this product.

Kothari’s two new awards come just months after his company received the $25,000 top prize at the John Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship’s Iowa Business Plan Competition.

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