February 2008
Robert C. (Bob) Ward
Personal Data:
Current Position:
Professor of Computer Science
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Tennessee
Office Address:
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Tennessee
223 Claxton Complex
1122 Volunteer Blvd
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-3450
Telephone: (865) 974-4389
Fax: (865) 974-4404
email: ward@cs.utk.edu
Major Honors:
Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1986)
Educational Background:
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Master of Science
Bachelor of Science
Date
1974
1969
1966
University
University of Virginia
College of William and Mary
Tennessee Technological University
Major Field
Applied Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics
Major Work Experience:
2/95 to
Present
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996
As Professor of Computer Science, responsible for leading and coordinating an active research program
in scientific computing and participating in the instructional and service activities in the Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Other Majors Positions Held:
(1995-2003) Department Head, Department of Computer Science
8/74 to
1/95
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831
As Deputy Associate Laboratory Director from 1994 to 1995, responsible for assisting the Associate
Director in the management of the Computing, Robotics and Education Directorate. The directorate
managed ORNL's basic and applied research programs in robotics, computational science, computer
science, intelligent systems, mathematics and radiation transport and managed ORNL's high
performance computing systems and educational programs.
Other Major Management Positions Held:
(1990-94)
Director, Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division
(1991-92)
Acting Director, Center for Computational Sciences
(1982-90)
Head, Mathematical Sciences Section, Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division
6/66 to
7/74
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia 23665
Responsible for research on the development of various numerical methods for eigenvalue analysis, the
co-development of the "core" mathematical subroutine library, the application of proper techniques in a
software package for performing time series analysis, and consulting services requiring mathematical
and programming knowledge.
Major Professional Activities:
Society Memberships: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
IEEE Computer Society
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
Chairman:
SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra (1986-88)
Sparse Matrix Symposium (1982)
Symposium/Workshop on Moving Boundary Problems (1977)
Co-Chairman: UTK/ORNL Special Year in Numerical Linear Algebra (1987-88)
SIAM Symposium on Frontiers in Computational Statistics (1984)
SIAM Fall National Meeting (1978)
Member:
Tutorials Committee, Supercomputing '95, San Diego, CA (1995)
Tutorials Committee, Supercomputing '94, Washington D.C. (1994)
Program Committee, Supercomputing '93, Portland, OR (1993)
Advisory Council, College of Engineering, North Carolina State University (1991-93)
Advisory Committee, The 2nd International Conference on Computational Physics, Beijing (1993)
Advisory Committee, Applied Linear Algebra Year, Inst. for Math. and Its Applic., Univ.
Minnesota (1991-92)
Advisory Committee, Sparse Matrix Conference (1989)
SIAM Council (1985-88)
SIAM Program Committee (1984-85)
Advisory Committee, SIAM Applied Linear Algebra Symposium (1982)
SIAM Visiting Lecturer Program (1977-79)
Organization Committee, Sparse Matrix Symposium (1978)
Major Professional Accomplishments:
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Developed the Combination Shift QZ Algorithm (selected for the internationally distributed EISPACK
software package).
Developed one of the most accurate and most commonly used algorithms for computing the matrix exponential.
Collaborated in the development of algorithms for solving diverse matrix problems, such as large sparse
eigenvalue problems, the singular value decomposition of a product of two matrices, skew-symmetric
eigenvalue problems, linear dependency analysis of multivariate data and block tridiagonal eigenvalue
problems.
Authored over 50 research publications in the area of scientific computation, mainly focusing on matrix
computations.
Managed an aggressive research program at ORNL to develop basic algorithms for parallel computers, to
develop techniques for characterizing the performance of such computers, and to transfer this knowledge to
computational scientists.
Led computer-related research activities at ORNL from a budget of $700K in FY82 to over $15M in FY94.
Led UTK’s Department of Computer Science into the position at the time of stepping down as department head
of being one of the most productive departments on campus (e.g., first per capita among science departments in
number of B.S. and M.S. graduates and in sponsored research funding).