Apparently I'm not the only person to think of this.
Welcome to my lame homepage. I'm no longer bothering to promise it'll get better.
Want to know where I am? Check out my 2009 travel schedule, which includes links to my older travel schedules, which I care about but no one else seems to. Odd, that.
I work at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK, where I'm the Director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) -- a division of OU Information Technology -- as well as an adjunct assistant professor in the School of Computer Science. My office is One Partners Place room 1910; I used to be in the Stephenson Research & Technology Center.
I've been teaching CS 1313, Computer Programming for Non-majors, since Spring 2000, except for Fall 2001, Spring 2005, Spring 2008 and Fall 2008. I also taught CS 2413 in the summer of 2000.
In Fall 2003 and summer 2005, I also co-taught ChE 5480, a course that combined nanotechnology and supercomputing. I taught the supercomputing part (surprise!).
Before this job, I was a postdoctoral research associate (and before that, a graduate research assistant) working under Michael Norman at the Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics, which at the time was part of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Mike has moved to the University of California, San Diego, where he's taken a faculty position in the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences.
Before NCSA, I served as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Supercomputing Research & Development, which is now defunct.
As part of my dissertation, I developed HAMR, the Hierarchical Adaptive Mesh Refinement system, which is an autonomous, general-purpose structured adaptive mesh refinement system for multiscale simulations that implements the SAMR strategy of Marsha Berger -- now a professor of computer science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University -- and various collaborators.
I also picked up an MS in computer science along the way, under Dennis and Don. My master's thesis was called "Visualization Techniques for Three-Dimensional Flow Fields," and I wrote it while working for Dennis at the Center for Supercomputing Research and Development, just next door to Beckman.
Before UIUC, I went to the State University of New York at Buffalo, where I got a BS in computer science and a BA in statistics. (At the time, both were part of the now-defunct Faculty of Natural Sciences & Mathematics, but now Computer Science — which has become Computer Science & Engineering — is in Engineering, and Statistics has become Biostatistics and is in the School of Public Health & Health Professions. Weird.) While at UB, I also worked as a programmer, research assistant and lab teaching assistant for Beverly Bishop, a professor of physiology. I developed software for running experiments in a neurophysiology lab course, and for conducting research into the relationship between spatiotemporal movement and motor neuron activity in human chewing.
I was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, where my parents still live. I have two sisters (try Alisa's webpage). I'm the baby of the family. About my brother Ed, see below.
Much of my copious free time is spent ballroom dancing. I teach for the Sooner Ballroom Dance Club at OU, and I'm a former officer of the Dancing Illini, which is the ballroom club at UIUC.
I also like movies, reading, biking and figure skating.
I'm a big fan of spiny echidnas.
There's a band in Columbus, Ohio called The Neemans. They even have a song called Lisa. Unfortunately, it looks like they may have gone out of business, since their new website is defunct.
My father, Moshe, who I loved very much, died on Monday April 6 2009. He lived 90 years and 5 days, and died at home in his own bed, with his loving wife caring for him, after having just eaten a bit of chocolate pudding. We plan to name our second child for him.
Here's a picture of the baby we're expecting: