Ronald Larsen received a BS in Engineering Sciences in 1968 from Purdue University; an MS in 1971 in Applied Physics from The Catholic University of America; and a PhD in 1981 in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, with Prof. Ashok Agrawala as his advisor. His career background includes: mathematician at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, working on real-time mission support systems for the Apollo project and numerous scientific and military missions; management of research programs in automation and robotics for NASA Headquarters; and leading the creation of the agency’s research program in computer science. Ron left NASA to become Assistant Vice President for Computing at the University of Maryland, and subsequently held a number of academic and administrative positions in the University Libraries and the Computer Science department. From 1996 to 1999, he served as Assistant Director of the Information Technology Office (ITO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). While at DARPA, he managed research programs in information management, automated language translation, and digital libraries, including the creation of the Translingual Information Detection, Extraction, and Summarization (TIDES) program. From 2002-2017, Ron served as Dean and Professor of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. During his tenure at Pitt, he served as a founding member of the Information Schools (iSchools) consortium, serving two 2-year terms as its chair. The consortium has grown from a founding group of five universities to more than 120 member institutions world-wide. He retired in 2018 and currently resides in Oakmont, PA.
Alumni Hall Of Fame
Ronald Larsen
Graduation Year:
1981
Dissertation:
Control of Multiple Exponential Servers with Applications to Computer Systems
Advisor(s):
Inductees
Narendra Ahuja
PhD 1979
Michael Antonov
Bachelor's 2003
J. Gary Augustson
Master's 1969
David Baggett
Bachelor's 1992
Suman Banerjee
PhD 2003
Sergey Brin
Bachelor's 1993
Paul Capriolo
Bachelor's 2006
Anthony Casalena
Bachelor's 2005
Charles Dyer
PhD 1979
Martín Farach-Colton
PhD 1991
Gary Flake
PhD 1993
Greg Frederickson
PhD 1977
Terry Gaasterland
PhD 1992
Rajiv Gandhi
PhD 2003
Howard Gobioff
Bachelor's 1993
Ponani Gopalakrishnan
PhD 1986
Naresh Gupta
PhD 1993
Patrick Jenkins
Bachelor's 2006
Subbarao Kambhampati
PhD 1989
Vipin Kumar
PhD 1982
Ronald Larsen
PhD 1981
Haroon Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2001
Idris Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2010
Zeki Mokhtarzada
Bachelor's 2001
Shmuel Peleg
PhD 1979
Andrew Reisse
Bachelor's 2001
Glenn Ricart
PhD 1980
Debanjan Saha
PhD 1995
S. Cenk Sahinalp
PhD 1997
Pooja Sankar
Master's 2004
Jagdeep Singh
Bachelor's 1987
Aya Soffer
PhD 1995
Lee Spector
PhD 1992
Granger Sutton
PhD 1992
Gordon Vanderbrug
PhD 1977
Qiang Yang
PhD 1989
