Short Vita – October 15, 2004

 

Dr. Jerry Potter, Professor Emeritus

Department of Computer Science

Kent State University

Kent, OH

330 672 9063(KSU)

330 478 0373(h - preferred)

potter@cs.kent.edu

 

Current Status:

Dr. Potter is a Professor, Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at Kent State University. 

 

Teaching:

I have taught undergraduate courses in Introduction to Computing (C++), Artificial Intelligence, Compilers, Parallel Programming, Programming Languages, Data Structures, Databases, Algorithms, Graphics and Associative Computing.  He has taught graduate courses in Compilers, Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Parallel Programming, and Image Processing.

            I have developed new materials for courses such as Parallel Computing and Associative Computing at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

            I consistently perform in the upper 20% of faculty on student evaluations.

            I have directed over 35 masters theses and 5 PhD Dissertations

 

Teaching methodology.

            I believe in using multiple instructional aids, including slides, power point and the blackboard.  I believe in presenting all aspects of an algorithm or program: 1) the background/justification, 2) the algorithm in informal terms, 3) the theoretical aspects,  4) the algorithm with an example, 5) the pseudo code for the algorithm with an example. I frequently use the blackboard for examples as it allows a much more dynamic presentation. When I use the blackboard, I expect the students to take notes.  I expect students to always review the material presented in class, regardless of the form of presentation.   I encourage students to ask questions about topics that are unclear to them.

 

Service summary:

 

Secretary Sigma Xi

President Cuyahoga Valley ACM

Refereed for more than 15 different conferences, journals and workshops.

Area editor for the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing

Faculty advisor for Kent State University Student ACM

 

Education:

 

Jerry Potter received his Bachelors degree from the University of Iowa, his Masters from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J. and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

He has worked at IDA's Supercomputing Research Center, Goodyear Aerospace, Xerox Research, and Bell Telephone Laboratories. While at Goodyear, he was involved in software development for the STARAN, ASPRO and MPP SIMD computers.  While at the Supercomputing Research Center, he performed research on the Connection Machine for 1.5 years. 

            He is a member of Phi Eta Sigma, Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi

 

Research:

            Dr. Potter’s research interests include the continuing development of the associative computing programming methodology, including multiple associative computing (MASC), voice based computing (VACE) and web browsing (SOS), associative SIMD information retrieval, knowledge discovery and databases;  the development and integration of associative SIMD computers with other architectures (HASC); the development of techniques for compilation, natural language and artificial intelligence processing on massively parallel computers, and the development of techniques for the introduction of parallel programming at the high school level (TREK).

He has been funded by the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Naval Surface Weapon Center (NSWC), NASA Langley, NASA Lewis, the Ohio Edison Innovative Research, the Ohio Board of Regents and AFRL.

            Dr. Potter has received two patents, the Ohio Innovator Award from the Ohio Thomas Edison Program and an Outstanding Research Award from the KSU Student ACM Chapter.

           

Recent research activities:

Dr. Potter has been active developing and implementing an Associative Computing Methodology for general purpose programming (Plain English).  He believes it is a promising approach for “understanding” natural language. Most recently he has been developing techniques to improve voice based Plain English command recognition rates.  He has also published several papers with colleagues defining the limits of the von Neumann programming paradigm.  He has been active in developing voice based interactive multimedia browsers.  In the late 90s he was supported by AFRL to do research into knowledge discovery and extraction and the development of data mining on massively parallel SIMD computers. He was a principal investigator (with 3 others) for an Ohio Board of Regents research award for “A Control Parallel Data Parallel Computer.”

His research has resulted in several associative languages (ASC, ACE, VACE and Plain English) incorporating constructs to exploit associative search and dynamic memory allocation for real time interactive parallel computing.  He has published a ``Frontiers of Computer Science" research monograph ``ASSOCIATIVE COMPUTING'' (Plenum Publishers, February 1992) on his work in associative computing.  He was awarded an ``Ohio Innovator Award" in 1987 for his research on parallel OPS5 and associative computing.  He has had support from NOSC and NASA for the investigation of Heterogeneous Associative Computing on large parallel networks.

 

Selected Research Publications:

1) "Limits on High Performance Applications" in Proceedings of the SPIE's InternationalSymposium, ITCOM 2001, Commercial Applications for High‑Performance Computing, Denver, CO.  August 19‑24, 2001.

2) "MultiMedia Browser (MMB)" in Proceedings of the SPIE's International Symposium, ITCOM 2001, Internet Multiple Management Systems II, Denver, CO.  August 19‑24, 2001 (with A. Salem).

3) "Real‑Time Dead‑Line Scheduling Simplicity" in Aviation Psychology, March 2001 (with Meilander and Baker).

4) "Interarchitecture Comparative Analysis" in Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication in Computing, Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas, NV, June 26‑29, 2000 (with Meilander).

5) "Algorithms for Data Intensive Knowledge Discovery," AFSOR Summer Research Extension Program, Final Report, Dec. 1999.

6) "Flexible Parallel Processing in Memory: Architecture + Programming Model" in The Proceedings of the Third Petaflop Workshop, Frontiers 99, February 1999 (with Abu‑ghazaleh, Baker, Walker and Wilsey).

7) "ACE: An Associative Calculus Data Structure" in Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Vol 51, No. 1, May 1998, p. 63‑74.

8) "ASC: An Associative‑Computing Paradigm" in Associative Processing and Processors, IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1997, pp. 188‑194 (with Baker, Scott, Bansal, Leangsuksun and Asthagiri).

9) "Scalable Heterogeneous Programming Tools" in Proceedings of the Heterogeneous Computing Workshop, Cancun, Mx, April 26, 1994, pp. 89‑96 ( with Chen, Eshaghian, Freund and Wu).

10) "Heterogeneous Associative Computing'', Keynote Speech, in  Proceedings of the Workshop on Heterogeneous Processing, New Port Beach, Calif,  April 13‑16, 1993, pp. 3‑11.

11) "A Data Parallel Shell for Large Knowledge bases"  in  Advanced Research Series in Knowledge Base Shells, World Scientific Publishers, 1992 (with Bansal).

12) ASSOCIATIVE COMPUTING, Research Monograph, Plenum Publishing Corp, February 1992.

13) "Exploiting  Data Parallelism for Efficient Execution of  Logic Programs with Large Knowledge Bases'', (with A. K. Bansal),  Proc. of the International Conference of Tools for Artificial Intelligence, Washington D. C., USA, November 1990,   pp. 674 ‑ 681.

14) "Array Processor Supercomputers'', (with W. Meilander),  Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 77, No. 12, December 1989, pp. 1896‑1989.

15) " Data Structures for Associative Computers''  in  Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on the Frontiers of Massively Parallel Computation, Oct. 10‑12, 1988, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.

16) "An Associative Model of Computation'' in  Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Supercomputing, Volume III, May 4‑7, 1987, pp. 1‑8.

17) THE MASSIVELY PARALLEL PROCESSOR, editor, MIT Press, 1985.