Robert Walker's Home Page
Robert A. Walker
is the former
Director
and founder of Kent State's interdisciplinary
School of Digital Sciences;
a former Chair of the Kent State
Computer Science Department;
a strong supporter, Lifetime Member, and Distinguished Member of the
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM),
a "serious amateur" photographer,
a social media afficianado,
a fan of figure skating,
and Dr. Ellen Walker's husband.
He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
from Carnegie-Mellon University in
1988. He joined the faculty of the Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1989,
and moved to the
Computer Science Department at
Kent State University
in 1996, where served one year as Interim Department Chair
and four years as Department Chair (2006-2010).
In 2010 he led the team to form an interdisciplinary
"digital sciences" program, and became the founding
Director
of the new
School of Digital Sciences
in 2011, a position he held for five years.
He has now returned to the faculty in Computer Science,
though he continues to have some involvement in Digital Sciences as well.
Dr. Walker's early research interests were in the field of
high-level synthesis, in particular the scheduling and design
space exploration problems. He was the co-author of Algorithmic and
Register-Transfer Level Synthesis: The System Architect's
Workbench and A
Survey of High-Level Synthesis Systems, and most of this work was
supported by the National Science Foundation.
Some of his later work focused on novel architectures for
embedded systems. Building on the KSU CS Department's historical
strength in parallel computing, he and many of his students have
explored the use of associative SIMD computing techniques on FPGAs,
demonstrating their suitability for embedded systems running such
applications as data mining, image processing, etc.
During his time forming the School of Digital Sciences,
he became interested in enterprise architecture and in
interdisciplinary programs that blend computer science with other fields.
For 18 years (1992 to 2009), he was deeply involved with the ACM Special Interest Group on Design
Automation (ACM/SIGDA), serving as Secretary / Treasurer,
Newsletter Editor, Chair, and Past Chair.
He has served on over 120 conference steering, organizing, and
program committees, including
seven years on the DATE
Sponsors' Committee,
four years on the DAC Executive Committee, and
seven years on the ICCAD Executive Committee.
He received the
SIGDA Meritorious Service Award in 1997,
and the SIGDA Distinguished Service Award in
2006 "for dedicated service as SIGDA Chair (2001-2005) and over
a decade of service to SIGDA, DAC, and the EDA profession".
Dr. Walker is also very active in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM),
as a whole, where he
served six years as one of three Representatives from the
SIG Governing Board
to the
ACM Council.
He also served on the
ACM Council's Awards Committee as the first Chair of the
Senior Member Committee,
and he served for a while on the
ACM Women's Council (ACM-W), leading
an effort to increase recognition of women in computing.
He received the Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award in June 2008
"for a sustained record of dedicated and conscientious leadership
within the ACM Special Interest Groups, including service as Chair of
the SIG Governing Board, Chair of SIGDA, SGB Representative to
Council, as well as leadership in ACM conference organization".
He recently returned to service with the ACM and is currently serving
as a member of the Publications Board.
