Academic appointments

After getting a BA in Biology at Rice University (1968), I went directly to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, inspired in part by the US war in Vietnam. I finished there in three years with a PhD in Computer Science (1971).

My first full faculty position was in Computer Science at Rutgers University (1971-74). I then became a Principal Scientist at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1974-90). BBN was a high-tech research firm, where I observed a lot of early Internet development.

In 1990, I moved to the University of Illinois, where I taught in Curriculum & Instruction, with appointments in Bioengineering, the Center for Writing Studies, and the Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies (1990-2000). After ten years I switched my primary appointment to Information Sciences (2000-11). During 2007-08, I held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the National College of Ireland in Dublin. Over the years, I’ve taught courses in Australia, Finland, Sweden, Turkey, Germany, and Nepal.

University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)

Bolt Beranek and Newman

  • Principal Scientist, 1988-90
  • Division Scientist, 1984-88
  • Senior Scientist, 1974-84
  • Department Manager, Education Department, 1985-87
  • Executive Board, The Literacies Institute, 1989-90
  • Speech Understanding by Computer (DARPA), 1974-76

Rutgers University

  • Senior Investigator, NIH Research Resource on Computers in Biomedicine, 1971-75
  • Assistant Professor, Computer Science, 1971-74

University of Texas at Austin

  • Teaching Assistant, Computer Sciences Department, 1969-71
  • Research Assistant, Computer Natural Language Understanding, 1969

Texas Christian University

  • Research Assistant, Computer pattern recognition, 1968