Robert Walker's Home Page
Robert A. Walker 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 is currently serving as Department Chair.
Dr. Walker's early research interests were in the field of
high-level synthesis, in particular the scheduling and design
space exploration problems. He wrote two dozen papers on these
topics, and was the co-author of Algorithmic and
Register-Transfer Level Synthesis: The System Architect's
Workbench and A
Survey of High-Level Synthesis Systems. Most of this work was
supported by the National Science Foundation.
His more recent work has 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. With another
student (now an alumnus), he is exploring techniques for improving
instruction cache performance in embedded systems.
Since 1992, he has been deeply involved with the
ACM Special Interest Group on Design
Automation (ACM/SIGDA),
serving as Secretary / Treasurer, Newsletter Editor,
Chair, and currently as Past Chair.
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 very active in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM),
where he
is currently serving as one of three Representatives from the
SIG Governing Board
to the
ACM Council.
He also serves on the
ACM Council's Awards Committee, as Chair of the
Senior Member Committee.
More recently, he has joined 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 is a
Distinguished Member
of the ACM, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a member of ACM/SIGDA,
ACM/SIGARCH, ACM/SIGCSE, IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Circuits and
Systems Society, and Sigma Xi.
He has served on over 120 conference steering, organizing, and
program committees, including
7 years on the DATE
Sponsors' Committee,
4 years on the DAC Executive Committee, and
7 years on the the ICCAD Executive Committee.
He has a strong interest in teaching, and received the
Lilly Endowment Teaching Fellowship in 1990 and the Rensselaer
Distinguished Teaching Fellowship in 1992.
