Ken Hawick is a very experienced talented computer scientist who
has my strongest recommendation. He brings to Kent a wealth of practical
computing expertise. Further his good communication skills suggests
that he would be an excellent teacher -- an area where his professional career
has not allowed him much exposure so far.
Ken was a project leader at NPAC from 1993-95 where he played a major role as 
we redirected our focus from parallel computing to information technology.
This was at the beginning of the web explosion and Ken was one of the first to use
this in a major way in a project (the Electronic InfoMall) we did for Rome
Laboratory. Ken mainly worked in our industrial outreach program in efforts
ranging from financial modelling, computational electromagnetics to the important
PET program he describes in his resume. His early work was critical as in the last
year these activities totaled some $1.6M a year at NPAC. His leadership of the 
proposal preparation was critical. Academically he played a major role in CRPC's
(Center for Research in Parallel Computation) NHSE (National Software Exchange)
program and his resource material is still being actively used. I was of course
very disappointed when he decided to return to the United Kingdom. I tried my
hardest to keep him at NPAC.
I still collaborate with Ken on some small projects -- finishing up some old work
on applications of High Performance Fortran and the Java Grande Forum. I would be
happy to expand this. Looking at his resume, Ken seems to have continued his enthusiastic
pursuit of interesting research. You should try to attract him to Kent!