[MUSIC]
In this optional video, I want to do two things.
I want to give you a little background on who I am,
just in case you're curious since we'll be spending a lot of time together.
And, second,
I want to acknowledge all the people you don't see in front of the camera that have
been absolutely essential in making this course what it is.
So in terms of me,
here's a picture of the United States where I have lived all of my life.
I grew up right in the middle in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri.
When I was 18,
I went off to college as an undergraduate at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
I last lived in Texas in 1997, I miss the burritos.
I then went to grad school in upstate New York at Cornell University.
For those of you not familiar with Northeast United States geography,
when you hear New York, you tend to think New York City.
I was about a 4.5-hour drive from New York City, it's a rather large state.
And then in 2003, I moved to the University of Washington all the way on
the West Coast where I've been a faculty member in the Department of
Computer Science and Engineering ever since.
It's my favorite place to live.
It's my favorite place to work and I'm very, very happy here.
A little bit about my research when I'm not teaching courses, an online courses.
I am a member of the programming languages research community and I believe deeply in
the fundamental elegance of the formal side of programming languages.
Things like functional languages, type systems, proofs about programs.
And in general, formal semantics.
And in particular, operational semantics, but I've been rather applied
within that context in using that sort of foundation for messy real world computing
problems such as how to write systems programs in languages like C.
How to solve the difficulties of concurrent programming,
which became much more important when we got to multicore processors.
More recently,
even dealing with ways to try to continue to improve computing's performance in
an age where our hardware is fundamentally limited by issues of power and energy.
So, I've always found this to be a really enjoyable fulfilling strategy to
collaborate with others on important problems from a perspective of sort of
foundational concepts and programming languages.
Theory.
In recent years, I've also become more focused on computer science education.
This MOOC is certainly a part of that, but more generally,
computer science curriculum issues overall is something I'm very passionate about.
I don't spend all my time on computer science,
I used to do a bunch of things like go hiking in Montana.
I did that I think in the summer of 2012.
Play ice hockey once a week.
You can't tell that that guy in front with the helmet and the stick is me, but
I enjoy skating around when I get the opportunity.
I like to go on long bike rides, this is me finishing up a 320 kilometer
bike ride here in the Pacific Northwest and I even live with a dog.
This is Red dog, she's awesome.
And as you finish each homework, she will visit you and give you a message.
I've also traveled a fair amount, although I would love to do more.
Here's a list of the countries I've visited.
For fun, I've put them in order from smallest to largest.
I think there are about 25 of them and I've traveled a lot around my own country
of the 50 states in the US, I've definitely not been to Alaska.
And I'm not sure if when I was a kid, I made it to Delaware or not.
I've certainly been everywhere else, but a lot has changed for
me in the last couple years.
In fact, since I first recorded most of the material for this MOOC.
I had my first child, a wonderful baby boy in December 2013 and
a second wonderful baby boy in September 2015.
So, I have no idea how I would have ever created an online course after I had kids.
So, I'm glad I did most of it before.
I have no idea how I'm able to survive on as little sleep as I do these days, but
having kids is the most wonderful thing and
it's a huge part of my life that you won't see in the course, but
I wanted to show you a little bit about me and that's a huge part of how I am today.