Boon Thau Loo

Boon Thau Loo is a Singaporean-American computer scientist, university administrator, and businessperson. Loo is currently the RCA professor of artificial intelligence in the Computer and Information Science department at the University of Pennsylvania where he leads a research lab working on distributed systems, and serves as the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science. As Associate Dean, he led the creation of MCIT Online, the first Ivy League fully online master's degree program in computer science for non-computer science majors. As a technology entrepreneur, he co-founded and led two technology companies Gencore Systems (Netsil) and Termaxia which resulted in successful acquisitions by Nutanix and Frontiir respectively.

Boon Thau Loo
Born
Malaysia
OccupationProfessor, Entrepreneur, and University Administrator
Known forDeclarative networking, MCIT Online, co-founding Netsil acquired by Nutanix and Termaxia acquired by Frontiir
Academic background
EducationPhD
Alma materStanford University
University of California, Berkeley
ThesisThe Design and Implementation of Declarative Networks (2006)
Doctoral advisorJoseph M. Hellerstein and Ion Stoica[1]
Academic work
DisciplineComputer scientist
InstitutionsUniversity of Pennsylvania
Websitehttps://boonloo.cis.upenn.edu/

Early life

Boon Thau Loo was born in Malaysia and grew up in Singapore.[2] He studied at The Chinese High School (Singapore) and Raffles Junior College. In 1996, he moved to the United States in order to attend the University of California, Berkeley,[3] where he received an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Following his studies there, he pursued his master's degree in computer sciences[4] at Stanford University.[2] He then returned to Berkeley for his PhD,[4] which he graduated in 2006 with the David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize dissertation award and the 2007 ACM SIGMOD Dissertation Award[5] for his thesis The Design and Implementation of Declarative Networks.[1] Following his studies, Loo began working as a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research.[4][2]

Academic career

As a scholar, Loo became the RCA professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania[4] in the departments of Computer and Information Science and Electrical and Systems Engineering.[5] At Penn he is also the director of the Distributed Systems Laboratory and the NetDB@Penn research group.[6] In 2018, he became the associate dean of master's and professional programs,[7] where he oversees all Master's and professional programs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.[5][8] As associate dean, Loo led several new academic initiatives, such as MCIT Online,[9] first Ivy League fully online master's degree program in computer science for non-computer science majors, the J.P. Eckert Diversity Fellowship,[10] Cybersecurity boot camp for mid-career professionals in the Philadelphia greater area,[11] and the accelerated master's program for Penn undergraduates.[12]

While serving as a researcher and professor, Loo has founded several private enterprises.[13] He has published over 140 papers[14] and two books - Declarative Networking (Synthesis Lectures on Data Management) in 2012[15] and Datalog and Recursive Query Processing (Foundations and Trends(r) in Databases) in 2013.[16]

In July 2020, Loo was appointed Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, where he oversees all doctoral, master's and professional programs at Penn Engineering.

Business career

While on sabbatical leave from Penn in 2014, Loo cofounded and led Gencore Systems,[3] a Penn startup company on cloud performance monitoring.[2] Leading a group of his former students that spun off the company with him, Loo formed a partnership with the OpenLab of Juniper Networks and integrated his group's research on high-performance declarative network analytics into Juniper's newly acquired Contrail SDN platform.[17] The company raised seed funding in addition to a SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grant from the National Science Foundation. The company was later renamed Netsil and acquired by Nutanix in 2018 for up to US$74M in stock.[18]

In 2015, Loo also cofounded Termaxia, a big data storage company, where he served as Chief Scientist.[19] In 2020, the company was acquired by Frontiir, a leading Internet company in Southeast Asia.[20] Post acquisition, Loo currently serves as the executive adviser at Frontiir, where he advises the CEO and CTO on technology strategy, and help establish Frontiir's R&D center in Philadelphia.

Recognition

In 2018, Loo was awarded the Emerging Inventor of the Year prize from the Penn Center for Innovation.[21][22] In 2019, Loo was awarded the scholarly chair of RCA Professor in Artificial Intelligence.[23]

References
  1. Marianne Winslett (2007). "Boon Thau Loo speaks out: on his SIGMOD dissertation award, better networking through datalog, life as an assistant professor, and more". ACM SIGMOD Record.
  2. "Penn faculty startup raises $100K from Startup PHL angel fund". Philadelphia Business Journal. March 26, 2015.
  3. Reyes, Juliana (6 November 2013). "Meet one of the first faculty startups from Penn's Comp. Sci. department". Technical.ly Philly.
  4. Loo, Boon Thau (31 August 2018). "How I crossed the academic chasm and entered the startup life". Technical.ly Philly.
  5. "Boon Thau Loo". CrunchBase.
  6. "Database Group stays on cutting edge of technology" (PDF). The Daily Pennsylvanian.
  7. contributor, Roberto Torres / (25 July 2018). "Penn Engineering launches its first online-only master's program on Coursera". Technical.ly Philly.
  8. Becker, Courtney. "University of Pennsylvania to offer fully-online master's program in computer science". Philadelphia Inquirer.
  9. "Online Master of Computer and Information Technology".
  10. "2018 J.P. Eckert Master's Fellows".
  11. "Penn is launching a 24-week cybersecurity bootcamp".
  12. "Penn Engineering sub-matriculants must now complete undergraduate degree in 4 years".
  13. contributor, Roberto Torres / (8 February 2018). "One of StartUp PHL's original investments is finally out of stealth mode". Technical.ly Philly.
  14. "dblp: Boon Thau Loo". DBLP - Computer Science Bibliography.
  15. Loo, Boon Thau; Zhou, Wenchao (1 January 2012). Declarative Networking. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. ISBN 9781608456024 – via Google Books.
  16. Green, Todd J.; Huang, Shan Shan; Loo, Boon Thau; Zhou, Wenchao (26 June 2019). Datalog and Recursive Query Processing. Now Publishers. ISBN 9781601987525 – via Google Books.
  17. Surden, Esther. "Juniper's OpenLab in Bridgewater Having Worldwide Impact".
  18. "Nutanix To Acquire Netsil For Up To $74 Million In Stock".
  19. contributor, Roberto Torres / (21 July 2016). "This stealth-mode company nabbed $100K from StartUp PHL". Technical.ly Philly.
  20. "Myanmar's Frontiir acquires Termaxia, Cloud Storage High-tech Firm in US".
  21. "PCI event recognizes faculty trailblazers". Penn Today.
  22. "Volume 65 Number 15". almanac.upenn.edu.
  23. "Penn Engineering's Four New Scholarly Chairs".
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