Advanced computer architecture and interdisciplinary computing
NAE profile: Daniel E. Atkins, interdisciplinary engineering, computer science and engineering.
7 minutes
The Highest Honor
Get to know Michigan Engineering’s National Academy of Engineering members.
Daniel E. Atkins, Emeritus W.K. Kellogg Professor at the University of Michigan, made significant contributions to computer architecture with innovations in high-speed arithmetic and experimental machine design. In his career’s second phase, he pioneered cyber-enabled distributed knowledge communities, like collaboratories and digital libraries, enhancing scientific research and education. As Dean and Founding Dean of UM’s School of Information, he also guided national cyberinfrastructure policy as NSF’s inaugural Office Director. An esteemed National Academy of Engineering member, he has advised across academia, industry, and government. For these achievements, Daniel E. Atkins was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014. View the NAE citation.
Daniel E. Atkins significantly advanced computer architecture and interdisciplinary computing. He shaped digital landscapes through collaboratories and digital libraries, transforming the School of Information and leading global cyberinfrastructure initiatives at the NSF.
Affiliations
- W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information Emeritus
- University of Michigan, University of Michigan
- University of Michigan
- National Science Foundation
On this page
Background & education
- Professor Emeritus, EECS – Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, 2015
- Professor Emeritus of Information, W K Kellogg Emeritus Professor of Information, inaugural Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at NSF, and
- Associate Vice President for Research Cyberinfrastructure, University of Michigan (2008-2013)
- Inaugural director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure for the National Science Foundation (2006-2008)
- Inaugural Dean of the U-M School of Information, 1992
- Assistant Professor, EECS, 1971
- PhD, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,1970
- MS, Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1967
- BS, Electrical Engineering, Bucknell University, 1965
In their own words
Tell us a little about yourself
Atkins: “I was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1943. My father was overseas in the Pacific, and I didn’t meet him until I was three and a half years old. My mother lived with various relatives during that time. After he returned, we briefly lived near Atlanta and then he was transferred to work for the Veterans Administration in Washington.
“As a young child, I enjoyed tinkering and building things with audio amplifiers. My mother says that even when I was age three, I was stringing wires between bunk beds to be a telephone man. When I was about 14, I picked up a booklet at the public library put out by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation about being a professor. And right then I decided that was the life for me, so I went forward knowing that I would have to go to school for a long time. I went to undergraduate school at Bucknell University and then graduate school at the University of Illinois.”
Can you share a Eureka moment, or a turning point?
Atkins: “Jim Duderstadt, Chuck Vest and I just worked together incredibly well and dramatically transformed the College of Engineering in five years. During that same time period I had met some social scientists and I was starting to see that this computing business was going to not just do number crunching, but was going to become a pervasive ecosystem for all types of human activity. There were people in psychology, economists, and other social scientists who were seeing that their fields were increasingly going to be impacted, and that computing needed to become an object of study for social sciences as well. So we formed an interdisciplinary laboratory that got a lot of research from Xerox and other places that were at the time developing easier to use interfaces.
“We were on the ground floor of what then was called computer supported cooperative work. We then got major funding from the National Science Foundation to develop a prototype of a system that would allow people to create proposals and have them reviewed in virtual ways, which is routinely done now. But at that time, just the idea of embedding graphics and images and pictures and documents to a computer was quite new. That was called the Express Project.
“One thing led to another and we became involved in how to use computers to support collaborative research in science. We were on the ground floor of a movement initiated by the National Science Foundation called Collaborators, a play on the word collaborate and laboratory, the idea of building laboratories without walls. We did the first major pilot project of the collaboratory, working with space scientists who were accessing ground based instruments in Greenland, studying the magnetosphere and the interaction of solar winds, which have sometimes knocked out satellites. Then we got another big round of funding to extend that to link together all of the major space science research facilities around the world.”
What advice would you give an engineering student?
Atkins: “Try to expose yourself to fundamental knowledge, fundamental things, not just science and technology, but to humanities and the arts. Use your undergraduate experience to explore a breadth of things and realize that any field you go into, especially if it has a scientific, technical focus, it’s going to be constantly changing.
“You really need to learn to learn and learn how to refresh your knowledge. Also put a strong priority on preparing yourself in fields that really contribute to social good, betterment of the world, and the betterment of human condition. Don’t waste time. Be adventurous, challenge yourself. Don’t just do things that you think you are good at.”
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced?
Atkins: “I’ve had a very fortunate life, and a wonderful upbringing. But it’s certainly a challenge to have work life balance, particularly when you have these hard, highly demanding academic and administrative jobs. Maintaining relationships with my kids and my wife and meeting my responsibilities was always a challenge. Fortunately, it’s worked out all right. Two days ago, my wife and I had our 57th wedding anniversary. So we got that more or less right.
“Professionally, there’s always this challenge where if you’re trying to do something new and you need resources to do it, you’ve got to convince the people that have the resources to come along with you. I discovered that to get something done, you have to have some reasonable alignment of responsibility, have the authority to do it, and have the remit or mission to do it, but you also need the resources to do it. So if you’re short on any one of those, it’s hard to do it.”
What challenges and opportunities do you see for your field?
Atkins: “Every advancement in the application of computing has come with pros and cons. This AI world is a spectrum where on the one hand, it’s providing computing resources, allowing people to be creative, be themselves, achieve their goals and so forth. At the other end of that spectrum, computing is used in a proscriptive way by banks and others to control what can be done and can’t be done. And of course, at the university we have both those things, the business side, and the creative side.
“I’m glad to see that the university has formed a generative AI group and is providing some guidance and also providing tools. Michigan has a reputation of being at the forefront of the meaningful use of computing within its research and academic mission. So I’m hoping that the university will exert leadership in meaningful and appropriate use of generative AI. It’s going to be like most technology. There’s going to be a downside and upside, and I tend to agree with the people who think that some regulation is appropriate, or at least some way of making it mandatory that people identify the origins of these digital objects that they’re creating.”
Quotes edited from interview transcript between Daniel Atkins and Marcin Szczcepanski.