George K. Thiruvathukal
 
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Welcome to my (Google) site.

I am an associate professor of computer science at Loyola University Chicago in the CS Department, where I also serve as the department's computing director. Beginning with the Fall 2009, I am serving as co-director (with Steve Jones) of the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities at Loyola University, where we are both working with Peter Shillingsburg on tools to enable collaborative textual scholarship (among other things). I also co-direct the CS department's Emerging Technologies Laboratory with Konstantin Läufer, where we work on all things concurrent, parallel, embedded, and distributed--so called pervasive computing technologies.

I hold a Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois, where I was a student from 1988-1995 (M.S. in 1990, Ph.D. in 1995). My research from the beginning of my graduate studies was about lightweight object-oriented approaches to parallel programming and involved the development of object models, languages, libraries, and tools for parallel programming, mostly based on C and C++ on Unix platforms. I was a postdoctoral scientist at Argonne National Laboratory from 1996-1998, where I worked with Ian Foster on wide-area (grid) implementations of Message Passing Interface (MPI) and and interfacing Java to the grid. While I still have an eye toward high-performance computing through ETL projects in novel computational approaches and filesystems, my interests span all aspects of computer science with a strong focus on software engineering (and trying to do things right the first time). In recent years, I have been pursuing my interdisciplinary interests, including environmental science, health, and humanities. My specific work is aimed at computational doing by working with others in other disciplines to ensure the best computing practices/methods are put to work!

From 1989-1996, I was also employed in industry, both as a consultant and full-time staff member (for Tellabs, R.R. Donnelley and Sons Technical (Research) Center, and Metromail, which is now a part of Experian. After getting a taste of management in the latter, I made the fateful decision to return to research and academics, where I have been ever since.

In my spare time, I enjoy reading, history (and computing history), politics, world travel, and music (piano). I enjoy spending time with Nina (my wife), Rohan (my son), and Maya (my daughter). We have our hands full but love every minute of it.

My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), DARPA, the National Institutes for Health (NIH), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). I've also received industry support from Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Hostway Corporation.