Roy F Rada (born June 13, 1951) is a
professor emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
whose research in computer science and information systems
appeared in journal articles from 1979
till 2022.
Early life and education
Rada was born in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, Austria in 1951. He graduated from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
in 1973 with a B.Sc. in
Psychology
Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
, from
Baylor College of Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is a medical school and research center in Houston, Texas, within the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center. BCM is composed of four academic components: the School of Medicine, the Graduate S ...
in 1977 with a M.D., and from
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 Un ...
in 1981 with a Ph.D. in
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 ...
. Rada was licensed to practice medicine from 1977 to 1988.
Career
Rada worked with
Michael Conrad
Michael Conrad (October 16, 1925November 22, 1983) was an American actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of veteran cop Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on ''Hill Street Blues'', in which he ended the introductory roll call to each week's show with "Le ...
at
Wayne State University
Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...
from 1981 to 1983. He worked at the
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...
from 1983 to 1988 where he was chief of the Medical Subject Headings Section of the
National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...
and editor of
Index Medicus
''Index Medicus'' (''IM'') is a curated subset of MEDLINE, which is a bibliographic database of life science and biomedical science information, principally scientific journal articles. From 1879 to 2004, ''Index Medicus'' was a comprehensive b ...
.
From 1988 to 1995 he was a professor of Computer Science at the
University of Liverpool
, mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning
, established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...
.
From 1995 to 1998 he was the Boeing Distinguished Professor of Software Engineering at
Washington State University
Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant unive ...
in Pullman, Washington. Rada was the first director of the Online Masters in Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County that was launched on
Blackboard
A blackboard (also known as a chalkboard) is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulphate or calcium carbonate, known, when used for this purpose, as chalk. Blackboards were originally made of ...
in 1999, and he retired in 2015 as a Professor
Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of Information Systems at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral, ...
.
Rada's research assistant Karl Strickland was imprisoned in 1993 for hacking in a landmark British case, and his student
Harold T. Martin III was arrested for security breaches.
Rada was chair of the
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
, Special Interest Group on Biomedical Computing from 1990 to 1997. He was the Founding Chair of the
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is an American not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving health care in quality, safety, cost-effectiveness and access through the best use of information technology and ...
Special Interest Group on the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1 ...
for which he was awarded the Outstanding SIG Member Award in 2002.
Research
At the National Institutes of Health, Rada's team showed how various medical knowledge bases could be semi-automatically combined to improve
information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...
. That work led to his being honored as a winner of the 1990 Eliot Prize for a work judged most effective in furthering medical librarianship. One of the tools that Rada's team developed to facilitate using medical knowledge in retrieving information was spreading activation across semantic nets. Semantic nets underlying documents are traversed to facilitate individuals handling single documents, groups working across the Internet to access or create documents, and organizations manipulating libraries. Software engineers link their code and documentation semi-automatically to facilitate collaboration in building software systems, and students benefit from peer-peer commenting online. Rada's book on hypertext was published in paperback and also simultaneously in multiple electronic formats, including
Guide
A guide is a person who leads travelers, sportspeople, or tourists through unknown or unfamiliar locations. The term can also be applied to a person who leads others to more abstract goals such as knowledge or wisdom.
Travel and recreation
Expl ...
and
HyperTIES
The Interactive Encyclopedia System, or TIES, was a hypertext system developed in the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab by Ben Shneiderman in 1983. The earliest versions of TIES ran in DOS text mode, using the cursor arrow keys ...
. Rada formed an electronic publishing company called Hypermedia Solutions Limited in 1993, and that company helped make the first multimedia CD-ROM published in web format. Sixteen Ph.D. students earned their degrees under Rada's supervision. For his contributions to computing, Rada was elected a Fellow of the
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rada, Roy
American computer scientists
1951 births
Living people
Yale University alumni
Baylor College of Medicine alumni
Grainger College of Engineering alumni
Academics of the University of Liverpool
Washington State University faculty
University of Maryland, Baltimore County faculty
Association for Computing Machinery
Hypertext
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery