David Pope Anderson (born 1955) is an American research scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Houston. Anderson leads the SETI@home, BOINC, Bossa, and Bolt software projects.

David P. Anderson
Born1955 (age 68–69)
Alma materWesleyan University
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Known forVolunteer computing
AwardsNSF Presidential Young Investigator Award
IBM Faculty Development Grant
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
ThesisA Grammar Based Methodology for Protocol Specification and Implementation (1985)
Doctoral advisorLawrence Landweber

Education edit

Anderson received a BA in mathematics from Wesleyan University, and MS and PhD degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While in graduate school he published four research papers in computer graphics.[1] His PhD research involved using enhanced attribute grammars to specify and implement communication protocols.[2]

Career edit

From 1985 to 1992 he was an assistant professor in the UC Berkeley Computer Science Department, where he received the NSF Presidential Young Investigator and IBM Faculty Development awards. During this period he conducted several research projects:

  • FORMULA (Forth Music Language), a parallel programming language and runtime system for computer music based on Forth.[3]
  • MOOD (Musical Object-Oriented Dialect), a parallel programming language and runtime system for computer music based on C++.[4] A port for MS-DOS also exists.
  • DASH, a distributed operating system with support for digital audio and video.[5]
  • Continuous Media File System (CMFS), a file system for digital audio and video[6]
  • Comet, an I/O server for digital audio and video.[7]

From 1992 to 1994 he worked at Sonic Solutions, where he developed Sonic System, the first distributed system for professional digital audio editing.[8]

Inventions edit

In 1994 he invented "Virtual Reality Television", a television system allowing viewers to control their virtual position and orientation. He was awarded a patent for this invention in 1996.[9]

In 1994 he developed one of the first systems for collaborative filtering, and developed a web site, rare.com, that provided movie recommendations based on the user's movie ratings.

From 1995 to 1998 he was chief technical officer of Tunes.com, where he developed web-based systems for music discovery based on collaborative filtering, acoustics, and other models.

In 1995 he joined David Gedye and Dan Werthimer in creating SETI@home, an early volunteer computing project. Anderson continues to direct SETI@home.

From 2000 to 2002, he served as CTO of United Devices, a company that developed software for distributed computing.

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing edit

In 2002 he created the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing project, which develops an open-source software platform for volunteer computing.[10] The project is funded by NSF and is based at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. BOINC is used by about 100 projects, including SETI@home, Einstein@home, Rosetta@home, Climateprediction.net, and the IBM World Community Grid. It is used as a platform for several distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics.[11]

Anderson was involved in Stardust@home, which used 23,000 volunteers to identify interstellar dust particles via the Web – an approach called distributed thinking. In 2007 Anderson launched two new software projects: Bossa (middleware for distributed thinking), and Bolt (a framework for web-based training and education in the context of volunteer computing and distributed thinking).

Berkeley Open System for Skill Aggregation edit

The Berkeley Open System for Skill Aggregation (BOSSA) is a software framework for distributed thinking,[12] using volunteers on the Internet to perform tasks that require human intelligence, knowledge, or cognitive skills.

References edit

  1. ^ D. P. Anderson (1 October 1982). "Hidden Line Elimination in Projected Grid Surfaces". ACM Transactions on Graphics. 1 (4): 274–288. doi:10.1145/357311.357313. S2CID 18113587. Archived from the original on 2020-06-05.
  2. ^ Anderson, David P.; Landweber, Lawrence H. (July 1985). "A Grammar Based Methodology for Protocol Specification and Implementation" (PDF). Computer Sciences Technical Report (608). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-04-27.
  3. ^ Anderson, D.P.; Kiuvila, R. (July 1991). "Formula: a programming language for expressive computer music". Computer. 24 (7): 12–21. doi:10.1109/2.84829. S2CID 18682904. Archived from the original on 2014-11-05.
  4. ^ Anderson, David; Bilmes, Jeff. "MOOD: A Concurrent C++-Based Music Language" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-03-06. MOOD (Musical Object-Oriented Dialect) is a C++ class library for computer music [1]. It runs on SPARC, MIPS, and MC680x0-based UNIX machines and on the Apple Macintosh, and uses MIDI I/O. It is designed for algorithmic composition, interactive systems, and cognition research, and is well-suited to any application that needs concurrency and precise timing control. MOOD borrows many ideas from FORMULA [2].
  5. ^ Anderson, David P.; Ferrari, Domenico (February 1988). "The DASH Project: an Overview". EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on 2022-08-10.
  6. ^ Anderson, David P.; Osawa, Yoshitomo; Govindan, Ramesh (November 1, 1992). "A File System for Continuous Media". ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. 10 (4): 311–337. doi:10.1145/138873.138875. S2CID 14287235.
  7. ^ Anderson, David P.; Homsy, George (October 1, 1991). "A Continuous Media I/O Server and its Synchronization Mechanism". Computer. 24 (10): 51–57. doi:10.1109/2.97251. S2CID 16991576. Archived from the original on 2020-08-06.
  8. ^ Anderson, D.; Doris, R.; Moorer, J. (October 1994). "A distributed computer system for professional audio". Proceedings of the second ACM international conference on Multimedia - MULTIMEDIA '94. pp. 373–379. doi:10.1145/192593.192702. ISBN 0897916867. S2CID 14625985. Archived from the original on 2020-06-05.
  9. ^ US 5714997, "Virtual Reality Television System", published February 3, 1998  Archived 2020-06-05 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Anderson, David P. "BOINC – A System for Public-Resource Computing and Storage" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2012-05-14.
  11. ^ BOINC - Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing on YouTube, Dr. David Anderson describes SETI@home, BOINC and Volunteer Computing
  12. ^ "The 3rd Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop". Archived from the original on 2012-03-06. Retrieved 2015-02-12. p.39 (September 6, 2007)

External links edit