Dr. Kennedy received a B.A. in mathematics from Rice University in 1967, an M.S. in mathematics from New York University in 1969, and a Ph.D. in computer science from New York University in 1971. Since 1971, he has been a faculty member at Rice University, first in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and then in the Department of Computer Science, which he founded in 1984. Professor Kennedy served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science from 1984 until 1988 and again from 1990 until 1992. In 1985, he was named a Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science, a chair he held until 1997 when he was designated the first Ann and John Doerr Professor of Computational Engineering. He is currently Director of the Center for Research on Parallel Computation, an NSF Science and Technology Center with seven participating institutions-Rice University, California Institute of Technology, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, Syracuse University, and the University of Texas at Austin. In 1997 he was appointed to a two-year term as co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Committee on High Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology, and Next Generation Internet.

Dr. Kennedy has published over one hundred thirty technical articles and supervised thirty-two Ph.D. dissertations on programming support software for high-performance computer systems. He has directed the construction of several substantial software systems for programming parallel machines, including one of the earliest automatic vectorizers for Fortran 77 and an integrated scientific programming environment. His current research focuses on extending techniques developed for automatic vectorization to programming tools for parallel computer systems and high-performance microprocessors. Through the Center for Research on Parallel Computation, he is seeking to develop new strategies for supporting architecture-independent parallel programming, especially in science and engineering. To that end, he chaired the High Performance Fortran (HPF) Forum, an informal standardization group that defined extensions to Fortran 90 for data parallel programming. His subsequent work has included development of an experimental compiler for HPF and an associated programming environment.

Professor Kennedy was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1990. He was named a fellow of the AAAS in 1994 and of the ACM and IEEE in 1995. In recognition of his achievements in compilation for high performance computer systems, he was received the 1995 W. W. McDowell Award, the highest research award of the IEEE Computer Society.