Research and Centers

Abstract: Two important question need to be addressed when designing a computer system: “What functions will it accomplish?” and “How well will it accomplish these functions?” This talk addresses the second question and shows how quantitative models are essential to dealing with that question. A walk through the speaker’s memory lane will highlight a few examples of how such models have been successfully used in the design and analysis of a wide range of environments including: multiprogrammed mainframes, distributed database systems, client-server systems, supercomputers, parallel computing, mass storage systems, web and e-commerce systems, authentication systems, software systems, grid computing, and service oriented architectures. The talk concludes with a discussion on how quantitative models have been used by the speaker in the design of computer systems that are self-optimizing and self-configuring.

Bio: Daniel Menasce is the Senior Associate Dean at The Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering and a Professor of Computer Science at George Mason University. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from UCLA, is a Fellow of the ACM, and a recipient of the Computer Measurement Group’s 2001 A.A. Michelson Award for lifetime “outstanding contributions to computer metrics.” Menasce published 200 technical papers and was the chief author of seven books some of which have been translated into Korean, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish. His research has been funded by DARPA, NASA, NSF, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology, and several private companies. Menascé was the recipient of various prizes including, teaching awards, research awards, and best paper awards. His areas of interest include autonomic computing, e-commerce, performance modeling and analysis, and software performance engineering.

Posted on: November 02, 2009