Karsten Schwan (August 21, 1952 – September 28, 2015) was an American

computer pioneer This is a list of people who made transformative breakthroughs in the creation, development and imagining of what computers could do. Pioneers : ''To arrange the list by date or person (ascending or descending), click that column's small "up-do ...

, academic who had held the position of 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 practical disciplines (includi ...

and the director of Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS) at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Biography

Schwan grew up in Oldenburg, Germany, the second of five children to Werner and Erika Schwans. He had a life-changing experience in his teens when his father who worked for the West German-American military was sent to El Paso, Texas for two years. It sparked in him a love of travel and of the U.S. His hobbies included reading science fiction books, hiking, and gardening. An East Frisian man, he greatly enjoyed starting his day with a big breakfast of fresh bread and cheese, and a regular ''Teetied'' with a traditiona
East Frisian tea ceremony
He earned his B.S. degree at West Germany’s Christian-Albrechts Universitaet. Later, he received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University where he began his research in high performance computing, addressing operating and programming systems support for the Cm* multiprocessor. During the graduate school, he married Cheryl Gaimon, who later becomes Regents’ Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. His thesis, “Tailoring Software for Multiple Processor Systems,” was selected as one of six theses in 1982 to be printed as a book in the “Computer Science Series” by UMI Research Press. In 1983, Schwan started at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

as an Assistant Professor. He has two children
Valerie Ringland
and Phillip Gaimon. He established the PArallel, Real-time Systems (PARTS) Laboratory, containing both custom embedded processors and commercial parallel machines, and conducting research on operating and programming system support for cluster computing and for adaptive real-time systems. In 1988, Schwan moved to Georgia Institute of Technology as an Associate Professor with tenure. In 2001 he co-founde
CERCS
the Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems. He became
Regents' professor
in 2010.

Awards

He won the 2008 HP Labs Innovation Research Award and is elected

IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

at 2016 posthumously. Since 2016, the International Conference on Autonomic Conference (ICAC) and High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC) have named the Best Paper awards after Schwan.

Ph.D. students

Schwan's doctoral students include: * Fabian Bustamante, Professor at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

* Dilma Da Silva, CS Chair at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

* Beth Plale,

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...

* Phyllis Schneck,

Homeland Security Homeland security is an American national security term for "the national effort to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and ways of life can thrive" t ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schwan, Karsten Georgia Tech faculty Carnegie Mellon University alumni 1952 births 2015 deaths