Zachary Kurmas

I am a professor at Grand Valley State University spending my sabbatical at Atomic Object. I will spend the 2010-2011 academic year at Atomic Object learning what my students do when they graduate and enter the “real world”.

I graduated from Grand Valley in 1997 with degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics. (Carl Erickson was one of my advisors.) I got my Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 2004 and began as a professor at GVSU that fall.

At Grand Valley, I primarily teach the two introductory programming courses (CS 162 and CS 163) and the senior-level computer architecture course (CS 451). My primary research area is the software (i.e., management) side of storage systems (a project that began while an intern at HP Labs); however, I have spent the last two years working on two software projects:

• JLSCircuitTester a program to simply the design and execution of tests for digital logic simulators. (Think of it as “JUnit for JLS”.)

• Zawilinksi: a library to simplify the extraction and analysis of inflection and other grammar data from Wiktionary.

See my publications page for a complete list of publications.

At present, I’m working with the small projects team at AO.

My two kids (5 and 3) consume most of my time outside of work; however, I do find time for the occasional long ride on my bike.