Thomas W. Christopher |
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| Experience Summary | |||
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| Experience | |||
| Education | |||
| Recent Publications |
My objective is to spend most of my time in activities that are conducive to my happiness. My current joy is my new company: Tools of Computing LLC.
Eighteen years as a professor of Computer Science; four years as a programmer. Specialization in parallel processing and compilers.
Researched, designed, and implemented parallel programming software systems. Developed IIT's Parallel Processing course (CS546).
Supervised PhD's experimental computer science. Taught experimental methods and scientific paper requirements.
Have written numerous compilers and compiler-writing tools.
Taught mainly at the senior and graduate level in core areas of computer science and wrote class notes used as textbooks for two of them.
(Since 1995 called "Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics").
| parallel programming software systems |
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| experimental computer science |
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| Compilers and programming languages |
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| Teaching | Taught mainly at the senior and graduate level in core areas of computer science: Parallel Processing (both shared memory and distributed memory paradigms), Principles of Programming Languages, Compiler Construction, Analysis of Algorithms, and Principles of Operating Systems. Taught modules in the programming languages course on object-oriented programming and functional programming. |
Taught undergraduate programming courses.
Researcher and manager of the TECHNEC project involving the design of parallel software.
Researcher and manager of the TECHNEC project involving the design of parallel software.
Thesis entitled Transactions-Oriented Distributed Queuing System Simulation on Network Computers. Explored a technique for speeding up queuing system simulations by running them on a multicomputer--quite a difficult problem due to the global clock. Major contributions involve precomputing delays that transaction will encounter later allowing the clock to be moved in larger steps.
Emphasis in programming, system software, compilers, and parallel processing.
Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society
Omicron Delta Epsilon National Honor Society (economics)
Robert Dean Bass Memorial Scholarship
One year of study in development economics at the University of Ghana
Christopher, T. W. ``Exploration of the Limits That Grain Size Imposes on the Speed-Up and Efficiency of Two Transitive Closure Algorithms,'' Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Parallel Processing Symposium, Fullerton CA 1990.
Christopher, T. W. ``Early Experience With Object-Oriented Message Driven Computing,'' The Third Symposium on the Frontiers of Massively Parallel Computation. Oct. 8-10, 1990. IEEE Computer Society Press. University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.
Christopher, T. W. ``A Technique for Damping Exponential Behavior in Reactive Object Algorithms with Invalidation,'' 1992 International Conference on Parallel Processing: Vol. II Software, Kang G. Shin (ed.), CRC Press, Aug. 17-21, pp. 20-23 1992.
O'Connell, William T., Thiruvathukal, George T., and Christopher, Thomas W., ``Distributed-Memo: A Heterogeneous Parallel and Distributed Software Programming Environment,'' Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Parallel Processing, St. Charles, IL, Aug. 1994.
O'Connell, William T., Thiruvathukal, George T., and Christopher, Thomas W., ``Distributed-Memo: Heterogeneously Concurrent Programming With a Shared Directory of Unordered Queues,'' Proceedings of the Parallel, and Distributed Computing, and Systems Conference, Washington DC, Oct. 1994, accepted for publication in the International Journal of Mini and Microcomputers.
Paden, R. L., Christopher, T. W. ``The Statistical Comparison of Two Parallel Combinatorial Search Algorithms,''. Supercomputing '90, New York, NY., Nov. 12-16, 1990.
Paden, R. L., Christopher, T. W. ``The Statistical Evaluation of a Hypercube Algorithm for the 0/1 Knapsack Problem,'' Proceedings of the 1990 International Conference on Parallel Processing, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA., Aug. 1990, pp. 265-269.
Paden, R. L., Christopher, T. W. ``The Empirical Evaluation of Combinatorial Search Algorithms on Shared and Distributed Memory MIMD Computers,'' Supercomputing '91, New York, NY., Nov. 18-22, 1991.
Wang, Ming-Hwa and Christopher, T. W. ``Simulate CSP-Like Synchronous Communications By MDC Asynchronous Message Passing and Pattern Matching,'' 1992 International Conference on Parallel Processing: Vol. II Software, Kang G. Shin (ed.), CRC Press, pp. 2-9, Aug. 17-21, 1992.
Wohl, P. and Christopher, T. W. ``A Fine Grained Neural Net Simulator Encoded in Coarse Grained OOMDC,'' Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Parallel Processing Symposium, Fullerton CA 1990.
Wohl, P. and Christopher, T. W. ``SIMD Neural Net Mapping on MIMD Architectures,'' Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing, Pheasant Run IL 1990.
Wohl, P. and Christopher, T. W. ``A Parallel Processing Approach to Incremental Conceptual Clustering,'' Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Symposium on Parallel Processing, Anaheim CA 1991.
Wohl, P. and Christopher, T. W. ``Parallel Conceptual Clustering Through Message-Driven Computing,'' Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing, Pheasant Run IL 1991.
Wohl, P. and Christopher, T. W. ``MIMD Implementation of Neural Networks Through Parallel, Pipelined Communication Trees,'' Proceedings of the International Conference on Tools for Artificial Intelligence, San Jose CA 1991.
Wohl, Peter and Thomas W. Christopher, ``Designing Conceptual Clustering for Parallel Implementation,'' 1992 International Conference on Parallel Processing: Vol. III Algorithms and Applications, F. Stout (ed.), CRC Press, pp. 318-25, Aug. 17-21, 1992.
Available on request.