Gul Agha (گُل آغا) is a professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

, and director of the Open Systems Laboratory. He is known for his work on the

actor model The actor model in computer science is a mathematical model of concurrent computation that treats ''actor'' as the universal primitive of concurrent computation. In response to a message it receives, an actor can: make local decisions, create more ...

concurrent computation Concurrent computing is a form of computing in which several computations are executed '' concurrently''—during overlapping time periods—instead of ''sequentially—''with one completing before the next starts. This is a property of a syst ...

, and was also Editor-in-Chief of ''

ACM Computing Surveys ''ACM Computing Surveys'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Association for Computing Machinery. It publishes survey articles and tutorials related to computer science and computing. The journal was established in 196 ...

'' from 1999 to 2007. Agha was born and completed his early schooling in

Sindh Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

. Agha completed his B.S. with honors at the California Institute of Technology in the year 1977.Dunya, S. Gul Agha: The Talented Computer Scientist of Sindh. Feb 26, 2016. Sindhi Dunya: Voice of Sindh Culture. Accessed September 20, 2017
He received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in Computer and Communication Science from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1986 under the supervision of John Holland. However, much of his doctoral research was carried out in

Carl Hewitt Carl Eddie Hewitt () is an American computer scientist who designed the Planner programming language for automated planningCarl Hewitt''PLANNER: A Language for Proving Theorems in Robots''IJCAI. 1969. and the actor model of concurrent computing, ...

's ''Message-Passing Semantics Group'' at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT). Agha's dissertation was published by the

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

as ''Actors: a model of concurrent computation in distributed systems'', a book which, according to the ACM ''Guide to Computing Literature'', has been cited over 3000 times.

Interests

Agha enjoys

Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

music and is a

vegan Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. Di ...

and a pacifist. He has three daughters, including filmmaker Sindha Agha, and lives with his wife

Jennifer S. Cole Jennifer Sandra Cole is a professor of linguistics and Director of thProsody and Speech Dynamics Labat Northwestern University. Her research uses experimental and computational methods to study the sound structure of language. She was the founding ...

in Illinois.

Awards

Agha became a Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

(IEEE) in 2002. He is also a Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society, and a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Meritorious Service Award, and was an ''International Lecturer'' for the ACM from 1992 to 1997. Agha was elected as an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

in 2018 for "research in concurrent programming and formal methods, specifically the Actor Model".

References

External links

Agha's official webpage
at UIUC * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Agha, Gul Pakistani academics Pakistani emigrants to the United States Living people American computer scientists Programming language designers University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Fellow Members of the IEEE Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Year of birth missing (living people) American academics of Pakistani descent Sindhi people

Interests

Awards

See also

References

External links