Clarence Ellis (computer scientist)
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Clarence "Skip" Ellis (May 11, 1943 – May 17, 2014) was an American
computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
, and Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science at the
University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sys ...
. While at the CU-Boulder, he was the director of the Collaboration Technology Research Group and a member of the Institute of Cognitive Science. Ellis was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science (1969), and the first African-American to be elected a Fellow of the ACM (1997). Ellis was a pioneer in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Groupware. He and his team at
Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...
created OfficeTalk, one of the first groupware systems. Ellis also pioneered
Operational Transformation Operational transformation (OT) is a technology for supporting a range of collaboration functionalities in advanced collaborative software systems. OT was originally invented for consistency maintenance and concurrency control in collaborative edit ...
, which is a set of techniques that enables
real-time collaborative editing A collaborative real-time editor is a type of collaborative software or web application which enables real-time collaborative editing, simultaneous editing, or live editing of the same digital document, computer file or cloud-stored data – s ...
of documents.


Childhood

In 1958, at age 15, Ellis applied for a job as a
graveyard shift The shift plan, rota or roster (esp. British) is the central component of a shift schedule in shift work. The schedule includes considerations of shift overlap, shift change times and alignment with the clock, vacation, training, shift differenti ...
computer operator at the manufacturing firm
Dover Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maidstone ...
to earn money to help his family. He was offered the job because he was the only applicant. Although his job title was computer operator, his main duties were to walk around all night and be visible to prevent break-ins, and to watch over, but not touch, the company's new computer. At the time, Dover's computer was based on vacuum tube technology (2,400 vacuum tubes), used
punch cards A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
as input and output, and filled an extremely large room. In Ellis' free time on the job, he read and re-read the dozens of computer manuals that came with the machine. He taught himself as much as possible about the machine without touching it. Two months after he started the job, Ellis helped the company through an emergency. They had run out of unused
punch cards A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
, and needed to use the computer to process payroll by morning. During the emergency, Ellis was the only one who knew how to recycle the used
punch cards A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
. He lifted the hood of the computer and disabled the parity check circuitry. The used
punch cards A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
were recycled and the company was able to process the payroll. After this experience, the company began to seek him out whenever they had computer problems, and even asked him to operate and program the computer for them. Ellis states that this experience helped ignite his passion for computing.


High school and college

Throughout high school, Ellis' teachers recommended that he attend summer school programs at the local universities in Chicago. This was his first encounter with college-level students and university life. Though poor, Ellis was able to attend
Beloit College Beloit College is a private liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin. Founded in 1846, when Wisconsin was still a territory, it is the state's oldest continuously operated college. It is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and has ...
in the fall of 1960 because the church he and his family attended awarded him a scholarship. In Ellis' junior year,
Beloit College Beloit College is a private liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin. Founded in 1846, when Wisconsin was still a territory, it is the state's oldest continuously operated college. It is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and has ...
received an
IBM 1620 The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959, and marketed as an inexpensive scientific computer. After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970. Modified versions of the 1620 were used as ...
as a donation, and he and his chemistry professor were asked to set it up. This was the start of the Beloit College computer lab, of which Ellis was the director. During the early 1960s, Beloit didn't offer a degree in computer science, however, Ellis was able to substitute some of his science laboratory work with computer projects. In 1964, Ellis received a B.S. degree from Beloit double majoring in math and physics. After graduating from Beloit, Ellis enrolled in
MIT 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 m ...
for graduate school, but only stayed a short time because of his civil rights activism. He eventually attended graduate school 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 ...
, where he worked on hardware, software, and applications of the
ILLIAC IV The ILLIAC IV was the first massively parallel computer. The system was originally designed to have 256 64-bit floating point units (FPUs) and four central processing units (CPUs) able to process 1 billion operations per second. Due to budget cons ...
supercomputer. In 1969, Clarence Ellis earned a Ph.D. in computer science from
UIUC 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 Uni ...
, becoming the first African-American to do so. His Ph.D. advisor was
David E. Muller David Eugene Muller (November 2, 1924 – April 27, 2008) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Illinois (1953–92), after which he became an emeritu ...
.


Career

Ellis worked at
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
from 1969 to 1972 on probability theory applied to the theory of computing. In 1972 he became an assistant professor and a founding member of the computer science department at the University of Colorado Boulder to work on operating systems research. Ellis accepted a position three years later as an assistant professor in EECS at MIT to work on research related to
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
. He left MIT after one year to start work at Xerox PARC and
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 ...
. Ellis remained at Xerox PARC and Stanford University for nearly a decade. During his time there, he worked on the icon-based GUI, object-oriented programming languages, and groupware systems. "He was part of the team of sociologists, psychologists and computer scientists who worked on Alto, the world’s first personal computer (PC) and its related interfaces and software. Many of these innovations from the 1970s that Ellis was part of were later widely commercialized, for example in Apple’s Lisa computer and Microsoft’s MS-DOS software. At PARC, Ellis headed the Office Research Group, which developed the first office system to use icons and Ethernet for collaborating at a distance.” In the mid-1980s, Ellis led the Groupware Research Group at the
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, originally the Microelectronics and Computer Consortium and widely seen as the acronym MCC, was the first, and at one time one of the largest, computer industry research and development co ...
(MCC). While at MCC, he led efforts in
Real-time Collaborative Editing A collaborative real-time editor is a type of collaborative software or web application which enables real-time collaborative editing, simultaneous editing, or live editing of the same digital document, computer file or cloud-stored data – s ...
, and pioneered the field of
Operational transformation Operational transformation (OT) is a technology for supporting a range of collaboration functionalities in advanced collaborative software systems. OT was originally invented for consistency maintenance and concurrency control in collaborative edit ...
. In the early 1990s, Ellis left MCC to become the Chief Architect of the FlowPath workflow product of Bull S.A. in
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. In 1992, Ellis returned to the University of Colorado Boulder as full professor with tenure in the computer science department. There he continued his work on groupware, in particular next-generation, large-scale
Workflow system A workflow management system (WfMS or WFMS) provides an infrastructure for the set-up, performance and monitoring of a defined sequence of tasks, arranged as a workflow application. International standards There are several international standards- ...
s, and agent-mediated meeting support systems. In 2009, he became an emeritus professor at the University, where he insisted on periodically teaching an introductory computing course to “encourage students of all ethnicities to expand their horizons."Lum, L. (2002). Expanding Horizons: Clarence "Skip" Ellis. ''Diverse Issues in Higher Education,'' ''19''(1), 37. To provide further opportunities for students to pursue science and engineering, Ellis “helped establish the 10-week Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training (SMART) program at the university.” In 2013, Ellis won a
Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
ship to teach and perform research in the computer science department at
Ashesi University Ashesi University ( ) is a private, non-profit university located in Accra, Ghana. The mission of Ashesi University is to educate ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa; to cultivate within students the critical thinking skills, the concer ...
. At Ashesi, his research interests were developing computer systems to simulate alternative forms of government for developing countries.


Death

Ellis dedicated much of his work in later years to
Ashesi University Ashesi University ( ) is a private, non-profit university located in Accra, Ghana. The mission of Ashesi University is to educate ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa; to cultivate within students the critical thinking skills, the concer ...
in Accra, Ghana. He died unexpectedly at the age of 71 of a
pulmonary embolism Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a blockage of an pulmonary artery, artery in the lungs by a substance that has moved from elsewhere in the body through the bloodstream (embolism). Symptoms of a PE may include dyspnea, shortness of breath, chest pain p ...
during a flight home from Ghana on May 17, 2014.


Selected publications

Ellis C., Wainer J., Barthelmess P. (2003) Agent-Augmented Meetings. In: Ye Y., Churchill E. (eds) Agent Supported Cooperative Work. Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations, vol 8. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9200-0_2 Ellis, Clarence A. and Najah Naffah. 2012. ''Design of Office Information Systems'' (1st. ed.). Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated. Ellis, Clarence A., Simon J. Gibbs, Gail Rein. "Groupware: some issues and experiences". ''Communications of the ACM''. 34 (1) January 1991. Rein, G.L. and C.A. Ellis. "rIBIS: a real-time group hypertext system" in ''Computer-supported cooperative work and groupware''. ed. Saul Greenberg. January 1991. Pages 223–242. Simmons, Chris, Charles Ellis, Sajjan Shiva, Dipankar Dasgupta, and Qishi Wu. "AVOIDIT: A cyber attack taxonomy." 9th Annual Symposium on Information Assurance (ASIA'14). 2014. 2-12.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellis, Clarence 1943 births African-American computer scientists American computer scientists Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Grainger College of Engineering alumni Beloit College alumni University of Colorado Boulder faculty Ashesi University faculty 2014 deaths Scientists at PARC (company) Academics from Illinois 20th-century African-American people 21st-century African-American people