Subject: Letter of Recommendation

From: Saleh Elmohamed <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 22:09:56 -0500 (EST)

Hi Bryan,

Here is a rough draft of the letter I mentioned
that I'd like to write me when you get the chance
before Friday. 
See whether it structurely and grammatically
correct and whether I have added things that 
I shouldn't, etc.
If it all ok, I appreciate it if you could print
it on an official NPAC stationary, etc.

I thank you for your assistance.

----------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir   (here, we may need to use something else, GCF will
            use dear sir)

(dbc: may be you could add couple of lines or so here ...)

Saleh Elmohamed diligently (comment: I kind of like this word, 
GCF seems to like using it quite a bit :) worked with members of 
our research group on a number of important projects on high
performance Java (HPJava).

He put together very interesting and useful applications/applets 
and then assisted in parallelizing them (Using our own package, 
HPJava) to run on a cluster of NT workstations as well as on a network
of Sun stations running SunHPC software. His software has been used for 
our demos that we had at the 1998 Supercomputing conference, which was
held in November in Orlando. This software is now part of our 
software repository. He continues to work on other useful Java 
applications that will also be parallelized and be part of our 
software package.

Saleh also assisted in designing the virtual programming lab (VPL)
which is currently used as part of the distance education 
efforts of NPAC to make parallel processing (mainly through message
passing) on our computing systems available to other schools and
government organizations. 
Remote users use VPL to run their jobs (written in either C/MPI
or Java/MPI or Fortran/MPI) on our clusters of workstations. 
He also greatly extended the functionalities of VPL and made it 
not only bug-free but also more robust as well as more 
user-friendly package.

He continues to work with our research group to enhance our
HPJava by adding more useful parallel applications and test
cases.

Based upon his high quality work and contribution to our research
and development efforts, I highly recommend him to part
of the research and development staff of your organization.

(dbc: this last paragraph is ok I guess but it can be
written differently ...)

Best Regards,

(user name and signature)

---

From: Bryan Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:52:08 -0500 (EST)

> [...]

Can you proof read this and see if something needs changing?
If it's OK I'll get a copy on official paper.

Bryan

--------------------------------

\documentstyle{letter}

\begin{document}

\address {Dr.\ David Bryan Carpenter \\
Northeast Parallel Architectures Center \\
111 College Place \\
Syracuse University \\
Syracuse, NY 13244-4100 \\
Phone: (315) 443-5068 \\
FAX  : (315) 443-1973 \\
email: [email-masked]
}

\begin{letter}{\bf Recommendation for Saleh Elmohamed}

\opening{Dear Colleague,}

I met Saleh Elmohamed three years ago when I joined Northeast Parallel
Architecture Center as a research scientist and project leader.  In the
intervening time I have had frequent contact with Saleh, and had the
pleasure of working with him on many occasions.  While not under my
direct supervision, he has had numerous productive interactions with
my research group---often contributing to group meetings, helping
directly with development of interfaces, installations and
demonstrations of our software, and guiding younger members of the
group in various projects.

The activities of our group are focussed on development of libraries,
compilers, and other system software for parallel computing.  In the
past two years we have emphasized support for parallel and distributed
computing in Java.  Saleh has put together interesting and useful
Java applications and applets, and helped to parallelize them using our
{\em HPJava} software.  These demonstrations have been run on clusters of NT
workstations and on a networks of Sun stations using SunHPC software
for underlying communications.  The demos formed an important part
of presentions by our group at the 1997 and 1998 Supercomputing
conferences in San Jose and Orlando.  The software is now part of our
software repository and will be included in the example suite
of forthcoming {\em mpiJava} releases.

Saleh was also involved in design of the virtual programming lab (VPL)
used as part of the distance education work of NPAC.  This is an environment
that makes parallel processing on our computing systems available to schools
and government organizations.  Remote users exploit VPL to run MPI jobs
(for example) written in C, Fortran or Java.  Saleh extended the
functionality of VPL and made it into a robust and user-friendly
package, which, again, we have used to run HPJava demos at
conferences.

Saleh continues to work with our research group, helping to enhance our
HPJava software and adding useful parallel applications and
demonstrations.

My experience leads me to believe that Saleh would soon become a
highly valued colleague in any organization involved in development of
computer software or hardware, especially for distributed or parallel
systems.  I can highly recommend him for his considerable technical
abilities, his constant enthusiasm, and his professional and personal
good nature.

\closing{Yours sincerely,}

\end{letter}

\end{document}