Narayanasamy and Olson Named Morris Wellman Faculty Development Professors

Satish Narayanasamy and Edwin Olson, assistant professors in Computer Science and Engineering, have been named Morris Wellman Faculty Development Professors.

Satish Narayanasamy

Satish Narayanasamy’s broader research interests include computer architecture, parallel software systems and program analysis. His current focus is on addressing concurrency issues in mobile and cloud systems, which increasingly rely upon event-driven programming and customized processor accelerators.

Prof. Narayanasamy received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2007. His PhD thesis work on deterministic multi-processor replay systems led to the development of PinPlay, which has been used to build portable architectural simulators for studying new processor designs at Intel. He joined the faculty at Michigan in 2008, where he is affiliated with the Advanced Computer Architecture Lab and the Software Systems Lab. Prof. Narayanasamy teaches courses in computer architecture (EECS 370 and EECS 570), compilers (EECS 483), and parallel systems (EECS 598).

Prof. Narayanasamy received an NSF CAREER award in 2012 for his project, “Holistic System Solutions for Empowering Parallel Programmers,” and an ASPLOS best paper award. He has three times received IEEE’s Top Picks Award, which recognizes papers “most relevant to industry and significant in contribution to the field of computer architecture” each year.

Edwin Olson

Edwin Olson is the director of the APRIL robotics lab, which studies Autonomy, Perception, Robotics, Interfaces, and Learning. His active research projects include multi-robot communication, search and rescue, railway safety, and automobile autonomy and safety.

In 2010, he led the winning team in the MAGIC 2010 competition by developing a team of fourteen robots that semi-autonomously explored and mapped a large-scale urban environment. For winning, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded him $750,000. He was named one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant Ten” in September, 2012. In 2013, he was awarded a DARPA Young Faculty Award.

He received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 for his work in robust robot mapping. During his time as a PhD student, he was a core member of their DARPA Urban Challenge Team which finished the race in 4th place. His work on autonomous cars continues in cooperation with Ford Motor Company on the Next Generation Vehicle project.

He is active in the open source software community as one of the original developers of the message-passing system LCM, and the creator of the OrcBoard robotics controller. Much of his current software is available under open source licenses.

About the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Professorship

Michael P. Wellman, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, endowed the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Professorship in his grandfather’s name. Morris Wellman was an engineer who worked for most of his career as a civil servant of the City of New York. The professorship is awarded to junior faculty members in recognition of outstanding contributions to teaching and research.