Jeremy Elson's Life Story

The Short Version

I grew up in Bethesda, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, DC), where I lived until I moved to Baltimore in Fall of 1991 to attend Johns Hopkins University. My original plan was to go into medicine, but I eventually became disenchanted with the idea. I had been using and programming computers as a hobby ever since I was a child, but in college I learned to appreciate CS theory. I realized that I had real aptitude for computer science and decided it was something that I'd really enjoy as a real career, not just a hobby.

Hopkins wasn't typically considered to be among the very best CS schools at the time, but I think that I got an absolutely first class CS education there. My studies encompassed a wide variety of topics with an excellent balance of theoretical and practical training -- something which unfortunately seems pretty rare these days. I became fascinated by computer networks and started to ravenously consume all of the information I could find on the subject: the inner workings of LANs and WANs, network protocols and algorithms, and methods of writing network software (distributed and collaborative systems). I also was involved in various research projects on campus, and did a lot of teaching for the CS department's C and C++ classes.

I took a semester's leave of absence in Spring of 1995 because of the unexpected sudden growth of my somewhat whimsical company, Scholastic Matchmakers, and returned to Hopkins for a 5th year in Fall of 1995. I graduated in May of 1996, then took 3 months off to live in Jerusalem, Israel. There, I learned modern Hebrew at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in their Immersion Ulpan program.

After returning to the U.S. in September of 1996, I went to work full time at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. (I was certainly not new to NIH, having worked there every summer from 1990 to 1995 on various projects that integrate medicine and computers.) My work at the NIH was really interesting, but after a while I began to miss the academic life--both learning and teaching. I decided to go back to school, and applied to Ph.D. programs in computer science.

I finally decided on the University of Southern California where I started studies in Fall of 1998 in their computer science department. Specifically, I was working jointly (as most USC network students do) in the Computer Network and Distributed Systems Laboratory and USC's famous Information Sciences Institute under the direction of Prof. Deborah Estrin. (I also was able to scratch my teaching itch---at least temporarily---as the TA for USC's Operating Systems class.) I received an M.S. in Computer Science from USC in December of 1999.

In the summer of 2000, my advisor decided to move from USC to the CS department at University of California, Los Angeles. 6 of her graduate students went with her (including me); those who were very close to graduation stayed at USC. All of us continue to do joint research back at ISI. Unfortunately there is quite a rivalry between USC and UCLA in this small town of Los Angeles. Not having grown up here, I was mostly oblivious to it at first. But, crossing from USC to UCLA (and maintaining an affiliation with both) has been an interesting experience. I sometimes mess up and wear the wrong sweatshirt; this does not go over well.

My research is mostly centered around coordination and synchronization algorithms for massive-scale networks of small, low-powered devices ("sensornets" or "micronets"). Check out my work page for more details.

When I'm not working...

Active Hobbies

• Flying -- I earned my Private Pilot license in June 2003. Learning to fly is one of the most spectacular and incredible things I've ever done. This hobby appeals to me on so many levels. It's an intellectual challenge while being a visceral thrill. It requires knowing thousands of little details, but friends can appreciate and enjoy it without understanding them. It's a fine motor skill that requires subtlety and grace, but you're moving a machine that weighs thousands of pounds. It's a portal to unique and breathtaking views of both city and countryside, but is also a practical tool for transportation. What more can you ask? (Maybe that it's cheap.) I fly a couple of times a week, and currently am working on my instrument rating.

• Cycling -- I live a few hundred yards from a bike path that stretches along 20 miles of Southern California coastline. How can you live here and not be adddicted to using it? I ride the length of it on most Sundays, and typically commute to work via bike as well. No pictures yet.

• Cooking -- I have developed quite a passion for cooking in the past couple of years. I think it appeals to me because I feel like it's about as far as you can get from being a computer scientist. It's also my only hobby that allows me artistic expression. And, I think there's something romantic about putting so much work into something that is so ephemeral: spend an entire day cooking, and the result---for better or for worse---is gone in an hour. (Spend the day writing software, on the other hand, and you can spend the rest of your life responding to bug reports.)

Occasional Hobbies

• Running -- I used to run a lot, but these days, I generally prefer biking instead. I do still run during the winter, when the days are shorter and it's harder to get a bike ride in while the sun is up. My thesis advisor runs the LA Marathon every year but never quite convinced me to run it with her.

• Sailing -- I'm reasonably good at sailing small boats, but usually don't get a chance to except during our annual summer trip to Lake George.

• Free software -- I write and occasionally make time to maintain quite a few free software packages. Some of them have become fairly widely used, and I get patches and help requests all the time. Unfortunately, work has consumed so much of the software-writing portions of my brain that I haven't devoted as much attention to these programs as they deserve. I wish I had time to implement every feature people ask for, fix every bug reported, and answer every email requesting help. Usually I end up filing them away for another day.

Past Hobbies

• Racquetball -- I inherited a love for this sport from my Dad. I've got some game, but never really worked at it hard enough to get very good. I played a lot while I was at USC (1998-2000) because I lived right near the athletic center, but since moving to Santa Monica I haven't played at all. Too bad, because it's really fun.

• Hebrew -- I worked really hard to learn conversational Hebrew in college, and in the immersion Ulpan program I took for 3 months while living in Israel. Over the years I've occasionally taken a class, but, sadly, I've let this skill atrophy recently.

• Ham Radio -- My friend Guy (Shechter) introduced me to Ham radio in college, around 1995. I got a radio license, which involved learning the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...) and Morse code. These skills went largely unused for a number of years but came in very handy in 2002 while learning how to fly. My favorite part of being a Ham was working public service events, e.g., providing communication support for marathons or bike tours. I'd love to go back to doing those again, someday.

The Somewhat Longer Version

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