Intro

This is my last course of my 4th academic degree. If I ever consider another engineering-related degree, please shoot me. My future educational pursuits will be in the area of finance and tax laws, to support my professional athletic career (aka retirement).

My expertise and interests have changed over the past 3 decades. I started doing board-level hardware design of high-performance multi-processor signal processing systems, then moved to device drivers, and finally to software-based infrastructures for distributed systems -- both LAN- and WAN-based systems, small- and large-scale systems, commercial and military. I'm currently more interested in distributed system design strategies that maximize performance while reducing software complexity.

My dreams for what will be needed in 10-15 years don't really match my expertise and interests. For example, I think the most important things we (USA) need are 1) alternative energy strategies, 2) homeland security solutions, 3) more cost-effective, proactive health care management, and 4) more effective military technologies for urban fighting.

The technologies that I'd be interested in exploring are based on my expertise and interests (not the top needs of the USA, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader):

1. Advanced medical technologies, including the computer technology aspects of brain-human interfaces (for handicapped) or non-invasive monitoring solutions for proactive health care.
2. Cluster computer technologies, which is a fertile area for CS research. This is narrowly scoped to multi-processor, multi-core technologies (it's not focused on the world's critical needs), but that's my interest and my expertise.