Roscoe C. Giles, III is an American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and

computer engineer Computer engineering (CoE or CpE) is a branch of electrical engineering and computer science that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. Computer engineers ...

, the deputy director of

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

's Center for Computational Science. He is also a professor of computer and electrical engineering at Boston University College of Engineering,Faculty profile
Boston University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, retrieved May 7, 2010. with a joint appointment in physics.Faculty profile
Boston University Department of Physics, retrieved 2010-05-07.

Academic biography

Giles earned his bachelor's degree in Physics at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1970. In 1975 he received his doctorate from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, becoming the first African American to earn his Ph.D. in

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...

from that school. He was a research associate at

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departm ...

and the

MIT Center for Theoretical Physics The MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) is the hub of theoretical nuclear physics, particle physics, and quantum information research at MIT. It is a subdivision of MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Department of Physics. Research CTP ...

before becoming an assistant professor at the

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 ...

from 1979 to 1985, at which point he joined the

faculty as an associate professor, and was promoted to full professor in 1999.

Research area of interest

Advanced computer architectures, distributed and parallel computing, and computational science

Other activities

In 2002 Giles was the chair of the

Supercomputing Conference SC (formerly Supercomputing), the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, is the annual conference established in 1988 by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society. In ...

in Baltimore, becoming the first African American to take this role. In 2004 he became the first faculty member to serve on the BU board of trustees. Roscoe Giles is the founder and executive director for the Institution of African American E-Culture. This foundation was developed to deal with the problem of the

digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age in ...

, or the lack of access to information technology by minority groups and other poor communities in the US. Giles was also a team leader in the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

's National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) Education, Outreach and Training group, through which students and teachers learned to use advanced computing systems for understanding, modeling and solving problems. As of 2010, he is the chair of the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

's Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee.ASCAC Members Bio's
(sic), retrieved 2010-05-07.

Awards and honors

In 2000 Giles won the

A. Nico Habermann Award The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit association of North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia enga ...

offered by the

Computing Research Association The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit association of North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia enga ...

for "outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community".2000 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award Winner Dr. Roscoe Giles

, retrieved May 7, 2010. In 2004 he was listed by the Career Communications Group as one of the "50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science"..

References

External links

Computer Scientists of the African Diaspora: Roscoe Giles
Scott Williams,

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Giles, Roscoe African-American academics American computer scientists Boston University faculty MIT Center for Theoretical Physics alumni MIT Center for Theoretical Physics faculty Stanford University alumni University of Chicago alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century African-American people