Edward A. Lee

Last updated
Edward A. Lee
EAL18.jpg
Lee in 2018
Born
Edward Ashford Lee

(1957-10-03) October 3, 1957 (age 67)
San Juan, Puerto Rico
NationalityAmerican
Notable work
  • Plato and the Nerd (2017)
  • Introduction to Embedded Systems (2017)
  • Digital Communication (2004)
Alma mater
AwardsThe Berkeley Citation (2018), Outstanding Technical Achievement and Leadership Award from the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems (TCRTS), Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professorship (2006-2018), Frederick Emmons Terman Award for Engineering Education (1997), IEEE Fellow, NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award (1987)
Scientific career
Fields Computer Science, Electrical Engineering
Institutions University of California, Berkeley
Thesis A Coupled Hardware and Software Architecture for Programmable Digital Signal Processors  (1986)
Doctoral advisor David Messerschmitt
Website ptolemy.berkeley.edu/~eal/

Edward Ashford Lee (born October 3, 1957 in Puerto Rico) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, and author. He is Professor of the Graduate School and Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at UC Berkeley. [1] Lee works in the areas of cyber-physical systems, embedded systems, and the semantics of programming languages. He is particularly known for his advocacy of deterministic models for the engineering of cyber-physical systems. [2]

Contents

Lee has led the Ptolemy Project, which has created Ptolemy II, an open-source model based design and simulation tool. [3] He ghost-edited a book about this software, where the editor of record is Claudius Ptolemaeus, the 2nd century Greek astronomer, mathematician, and geographer. [4] The Kepler scientific workflow system is based on Ptolemy II.

From 2005 to 2008 Lee was chair of the Electrical Engineering Division and then chair of the EECS Department at UC Berkeley. He has led a number of large research projects at Berkeley, including the Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS), [5] the TerraSwarm Research Center, [6] and the Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center (iCyPhy). [7]

Lee has written several textbooks, covering subjects including embedded systems, [8] digital communications, [9] and signals and systems. [10] [11] He has also published two general-audience books, Plato and the Nerd: The Creative Partnership of Humans and Technology [12] [13] and The Coevolution: The Entwined Futures of Humans and Machines (2020), [14] where he examines the relationship between humans and technology. [15]

Biography

Lee was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1957. His father, a prominent businessman and later a bankruptcy lawyer, was a descendant of notable Puerto Ricans Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, a poet and playwright, and Bailey Ashford, a pioneering physician in the treatment of tropical anemia. His mother was originally from Kentucky, but moved around the country many times following her career Army father, Charles P. Nicholas, a mathematician who worked on scientific intelligence [16] during World War II (work for which he was twice awarded the Legion of Merit). [17] Nicholas went on to serve as a member of the original organizing team for national Central Intelligence, and later moved to West Point, where he became head of the Math Department at the United States Military Academy. [17]

At age 14, Lee left home to attend the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in New Jersey. From there he went to Yale University, where he flitted between majors before settling on a double major in Computer Science and Engineering and Applied Science. [18]

Career

Lee began his career at Bell Labs (1979–1982), working on data communication technologies. [19] After completing his doctorate, he joined UC Berkeley’s faculty in 1986, later serving as Chair of the EECS Department (2005–2008). [20] He co-founded BDTI, Inc., a firm specializing in technology analysis, where he remains a Senior Technical Advisor. [21]

In 2018, Lee retired from teaching to focus full-time on research and writing. [22]

As director of the Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center (iCyPhy) at Berkeley, Lee led interdisciplinary research into integrating physical systems with software and networks. [21]

Research

His work emphasizes deterministic models to address unpredictability in distributed systems, particularly for real-time applications. He developed Lingua Franca, a coordination language that uses logical timestamps to ensure determinism in distributed environments, and Ptolemy II, a modeling and simulation framework for heterogeneous systems. [23]

Lee’s research bridges engineering and philosophy, exploring the interplay between humans and technology. [24] His technical contributions include advancements in real-time systems, hybrid cosimulation standards, and secure architectures for the Internet of Things (IoT). [23]

He introduced, together with Marten Lohstroh, the reactors model, a computational framework for designing predictable distributed systems, and advocated for timestamp-based coordination to enhance reliability in cyber-physical applications. [25]

Books

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Professor Edward A. Lee". ptolemy.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-16.
  2. ↑ Lohstroh, Marten; Derler, Patricia; Sirjani, Marjan, eds. (2018). Principles of Modeling: Essays Dedicated to Edward A. Lee on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday. LNCS. Vol. 10760. Springer. ISBN   978-3-319-95245-1.
  3. ↑ Eker, Johan; Janneck, Jorn; Lee, Edward A.; Liu, Jie; Liu, Xiaojun; Ludvig, Jozef; Sachs, Sonia; Xiong, Yuhong (January 2003). "Taming heterogeneity - the Ptolemy approach". Proceedings of the IEEE . 91 (1): 127–144. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.4.9905 . doi:10.1109/JPROC.2002.805829. S2CID   10851913.
  4. 1 2 Ptolemeus, Claudius, ed. (2014). System Design, Modeling, and Simulation using Ptolemy II. Berkeley, CA, USA: ptolemy.org. ISBN   978-1-304-42106-7.
  5. ↑ "Chess: Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems". ptolemy.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  6. ↑ "The TerraSwarm Research Center". terraswarm.org. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  7. ↑ "Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems Center (iCyPhy)". icyphy.org. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  8. 1 2 Lee, Edward Ashford; Seshia, Sanjit Arunkumar (2017). Introduction to Embedded Systems: A Cyber-Physical Systems Approach (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press. ISBN   978-0-262-53381-2.
  9. 1 2 Barry, John R.; Lee, Edward A.; Messerschmitt, David G. (2004). Digital Communication (3d ed.). Springer. ISBN   978-1-4613-4975-4.
  10. 1 2 Lee, Edward A.; Varaiya, Pravin (2003). Structure and Interpretation of Signals and Systems (1st ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Addison Wesley. ISBN   978-0-201-74551-1.
  11. 1 2 Lee, Edward A.; Varaiya, Pravin (2011). Structure and Interpretation of Signals and Systems (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA, USA: leevaraiya.org. ISBN   978-0-578-07719-2.
  12. 1 2 Lee, Edward Ashford (2017). Plato and the Nerd: The Creative Partnership of Humans and Technology. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press. ISBN   9780262036481.
  13. ↑ "PLATO AND THE NERD - Home". platoandthenerd.org. Retrieved 2018-10-16.
  14. 1 2 Lee, Edward A. (2020). The Coevolution: The Entwined Futures of Humans and Machines. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
  15. ↑ Moira Gunn (2017-12-07). "Episode 17-49 Plato and the Nerd" (Podcast). TechNation Radio podcast. Retrieved 2018-10-15.
  16. ↑ Anonymous. Scientific Intelligence (Report). United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Archived from the original on March 12, 2008. Retrieved 2019-02-03.
  17. 1 2 Anonymous. Charles Parsons Nicholas (PDF) (Report). United States Military Academy (USMA), West Point, NY. Retrieved 2019-02-03.
  18. ↑ Lee, "Plato and the Nerd" p. 279.
  19. ↑ "Edward A. Lee: "Limits of Machines, Limits of Humans"". TU Wien Informatics. 2022-05-24. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  20. ↑ "Distinguished lecture: Edward A. Lee, University of California, Berkeley". Digital Futures. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  21. 1 2 "CISE Seminar: April 19, 2019 – Edward A. Lee, University of California at Berkeley | Center for Information & Systems Engineering". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  22. ↑ "Professor Edward A. Lee". ptolemy.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  23. 1 2 https://ptolemy.berkeley.edu/books/leeseshia/releases/LeeSeshia_DigitalV1_08.pdf EA Lee and SA Seshia, Introduction to Embedded Systems
  24. ↑ "Edward Lee". Research Explorer The University of Manchester. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  25. ↑ Lohstroh, Hendrik Marten Frank (2020). Reactors: A Deterministic Model of Concurrent Computation for Reactive Systems (phd thesis). University of California, Berkeley.
  26. ↑ Lee, Edward A.; Messerschmitt, David G. (1988). Digital Communication (1st ed.). Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN   978-0-89838-274-7.
  27. ↑ Lee, Edward A.; Messerschmitt, David G. (1994). Digital Communication (2nd ed.). Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN   978-0-7923-9391-7.
  28. ↑ Lapsley, Phil; Bier, Jeff; Lee, Edward A. (1997). DSP Processor Fundamentals: Architectures and Features. New York, USA: IEEE Press.
  29. ↑ Bhattacharyya, Shuvra A.; Murthy, Praveen K.; Lee, Edward A. (1996). Software Synthesis from Dataflow Graphs. Boston, MA, USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  30. ↑ "Edward A. Lee | EECS at UC Berkeley". www2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  31. ↑ "EDAA Achievement Award 2022 goes to Edward A. Lee | DATE 2022". date22.date-conference.com. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  32. ↑ "Edward Lee Receives ACM SIGBED Technical Achievement Award and Honorary Doctorate From TU Wien | Research UC Berkeley". vcresearch.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  33. ↑ "Edward A. Lee Awarded TU Wien Honorary Doctorate". TU Wien Informatics. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  34. ↑ "Distinguished lecture: Edward A. Lee, University of California, Berkeley". Digital Futures. Retrieved 2025-03-18.
  35. ↑ "Achievement and Leadership Awards: IEEE TCRTS". IEEE . Retrieved 2018-10-16.
  36. ↑ "ASEE's Frederick Emmons Terman Award". ieee-edusociety.org. Retrieved 2018-10-16.
  37. ↑ "NSF Awards in EECS at Berkeley". eecs.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-17.
  38. ↑ "IEEE Fellows 1994 | IEEE Communications Society".

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