Professional Interests (Joel Adams)

My professional interests include both teaching and scholarship (consisting of published work and professional activities). If there is a general theme to my scholarship, it is in reducing the level of frustration involved in dealing with computers.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Computer science education: how the process of teaching computer science can be improved. Some of my projects in this area include:
  • Using Alice to teach object-based programming. I direct the Imaginary Worlds Camps, in which middle school students use Alice to create computer-generated animated movies, and learn the basics of programming at the same time. I have also written two books:
    1. Alice in Action, and
    2. Alice in Action with Java.
  • Microwulf is a personal, portable Beowulf cluster that provides over 26 Gflops of measured performance for less than $2500. It is a distributed multiprocessor that provides significant computational power at a price nearly any college or university can afford.
  • The Ohm Project is a study of different Beowulf cluster topologies, the goal of which is to identify the most cost-effective cluster topology for multidisciplinary use (as opposed to dedicated-to-a-single-problem use).
  • Using Lego Mindstorms robots to teach Java programming.
  • PITA (Platform Independent Testing Application) is an on-line testing tool that allows tests to be created and given anywhere on the Internet (currently suspended until we find funding).

• Methodologies that produce more reliable and easier to maintain software. Applied object-oriented programming, which currently seems to hold some promise in this area. Some of my projects in this area include:
  • Extensions to ooMPI: a project is to apply object-oriented techniques to high-performance computing, so that HPC programs are less work to write.
  • ooMindstorms: A software library supporting object-oriented control of Lego Mindstorms robots.
  • Cliser, a system to generate object-oriented source code for client server systems.

• Fault-tolerant systems in general, and specifically networks and distributed systems that can identify and reconfigure around faulty components.

• Human-computer interfaces sufficiently simple that the average person can use them, without having to consult a manual.