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Below, Professor Coffman’s employment
history is given along with brief statements of responsibilities and research
directions in very general terms. Ph.D. graduate students are also listed
where appropriate. Discussions of his research contributions to-date and a
research bio in depth are given in the RESEARCH section. PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS 1958-1966 After an undergraduate degree
in Mathematics (UCLA '56) and a 2-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Coffman
simultaneously began his graduate studies at UCLA (G. Estrin, advisor) and a
systems programmer position at a spin-off of the RAND Corporation called SDC
(the System Development Corporation), where for 2 or 3 years he taught
machine architecture and assembly language programming. This work moved him
first into operating systems development, particularly time-sharing systems,
and then performance modeling and analysis. His later work at SDC merged with his
graduate research at UCLA: stochastic modeling and analysis of computer
systems - technical reports at the former appeared in a dissertation at the
latter, whence the Ph.D. degree in 1966 under the guidance of Professor L.
Kleinrock. 1966-1970 Coffman went on to the
Electrical Engineering Department of Princeton University, where his research
interests expanded into data structures, algorithmics, and combinatorial
scheduling theory. He was the Ph.D. advisor of R. Muntz, A. Shoshani, M.
Schmookler, G. Burnett, and L. Varian. He taught classical EE (circuits,
switching theory, ...) and early CS (algorithms, formal languages and
automata, ...). He also had a visiting position at Brooklyn Poly . 1969-1970 His last year on the Princeton
faculty was spent on leave at the (UK) Universities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
and Durham, where he was a Visiting Professor supported by an IBM Fellowship.
His was a research brief only, and focused on the areas mentioned above. 1970-1976 Coffman joined the Computer
Science Department of the Pennsylvania State University in 1970 where his
research interests in bin-packing theory and average-case analysis of
scheduling algorithms had their beginnings. He started as an associate
professor and was promoted to full professor a couple of years later. His
Ph.D. advisees at Penn State were J. Michel, R. Cody, and J. Leung. He was
acting head for one term (bridging P. Hammer and P. Fischer), and his
teaching focused on the design and analysis of algorithms, and operating
systems. 1974-1975 He spent a year on leave from
PSU at research in E. Gelenbe's equipe at INRIA (Institut National de
Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) in the suburbs of Paris. INRIA,
which in those days was just IRIA, had only just begun operations. The
principal direction of his research there was performance modeling and
analysis of computer systems. 1976-1977 In a return to electrical
engineering, Coffman spent a brief one-year tour of duty at Columbia
University, where he connected with Kimming So, a Ph.D. advisee, and began
research into the average-case analysis of bin packing. 1977-1979 Coffman went on to the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University
of California, Santa Barbara in 1977 and was accompanied by Kimming So who
completed his Ph.D. degree there in 1978. Coffman's research in two
dimensional packing began in Santa Barbara. 1979-1999 Coffman spent 20 years in the Mathematics Research
Center of Bell Laboratories, more specifically in a department devoted
primarily to the mathematical foundations of computer science and operations
research, a department led successively by R. L. Graham, M. R. Garey, and D.
S. Johnson. He continued his
research in bin packing and scheduling theory, and in the average-case
analysis of algorithms; he began his research in moving-server problems,
dynamic storage allocation, stochastic scheduling, interval packing (space
filling, adsorption-desorption, parking) problems, reservation theory,
polling systems, and in the performance analysis of communication systems. 1999-2000 In 1999, Coffman accepted
positions of Foundation Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for
Computing at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He taught a course in
algorithms and one in advances in communication networks. (See
TEACHING.) 2000- Coffman closed a 23-year cycle by
returning in 2000 to his old position in the Electrical Engineering Dept. of
Columbia University. He also has courtesy appointments in the Computer
Science Department and in the Department of Industrial Engineering and
Operations Research. He has served as the chair of the dissertation
committees of Fritz Cayemitte and Young Kim, who obtained their PhD's from Teacher's
College of Columbia University in 2000 and 2003, and chaired Petar
Momcilovic's PhD dissertation defense in 2003 (Prof. P. Jelenkovic, advisor).
He currently teaches courses in applied probability, communication systems
and networks, performance evaluation of computer and communication systems,
and an advanced course in the analysis of algorithms. (see TEACHING). His
recent research has focused on scheduling problems, stochastic analysis of
linear-networks (LANs), the analysis of hotspots on the Web (NSF grant),
design and analysis of distributed cache systems (NSF grant), analysis of
AIMD (TCP-like) congestion control algorithms, performance evaluation of
optical burst switching, and stochastic modeling of self-assembly processes
in nanotechnology. He continues work on a book on bin packing with J. Csirik,
D. S. Johnson, and G. Woeginger.
His current PhD students are Andreas Constantinides, Teddy Yimwadsana,
Jing Feng, and Buck Lee.
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