David P. Anderson

1243 Ashby Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94702
(510) 684-9149
[email protected]

Education

1985PhDComputer ScienceUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison
1982MSComputer ScienceUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison
1979MAMathematicsUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison
1977BAMathematicsWesleyan University

Employment

2002 - 2022: Research Scientist, Space Sciences Lab, U.C. Berkeley

I created and led BOINC, a research project that develops middleware for volunteer computing. BOINC was used by SETI@home, Climateprediction.net, LHC@home, Einstein@home, and about 30 other scientific computing projects from universities and research labs around the world. I am Principal Investigator on four National Science Foundation grants supporting BOINC.

I worked on the Stardust@home project led by Andrew Westphal at Space Sciences Lab, developing the "virtual microscope" technology enabling volunteers to look for particles of interstellar dust in microphotographs of an Aerogel collector.

1997 - 2016: Director, SETI@home, U.C. Berkeley

SETI@home is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to analyze radio-telescope data in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Since its public launch in May 1999, over 3,000,000 people have contributed 2 million years of computer time.

As project director, I raised about $2M in funds from a variety of private and public sources, hired and managed a team of 6 programmers and system administrators, handled news media, and managed the web site. I designed and managed development of the client- and server-side software, the web site, and the database. I managed the transition of SETI@home to the BOINC platform.

2000 - 2002: Chief Technology Officer, United Devices

This company developed a platform for Internet-scale distributed computing and storage, and marketed this platform in a number of application areas such as Bioinformatics and Web load testing. As CTO, I was responsible for the platform architecture, including its API, its cross-platform client software, and its back-end server and database.

1995 - 1999: Chief Technology Officer, Tunes.com, Berkeley CA.

I architected and implemented a database-driven, Web-based system for personalized music discovery and marketing. This system involves a number of technology components:

  • A system for automated sampling of CDs and encoding into multiple compressed formats (Real Audio, PAC). This was used to produce a library of about one million audio samples.
  • A relational database of CD information (UPC/track/title/artist etc.) combining data from several commercial sources.
  • A Web interface for browsing, listening to, and rating musical selections.
  • Algorithms for obtaining user "music taste profiles" on the basis of listening patterns and ratings, and for generating listening suggestions based on these profiles and expert editorial data.

1995 - present: Consultant

My consulting contracts have included:

  • For Virtual University International. Developed basic technology (Java/Javascript/SQL) for presenting personalized structured instructional material via the Web.
  • For Hotwired.com: prototyped a collaborative-filtering system for content personalization.
  • For Jump! Software Inc.: Developed a web site for sheet music sales, and an associated aggregation/shipping system, using Cold Fusion, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access and VB.
I developed and operated rare.com, a Web-based system for rating-based recommendation of movies, TV, and other entertainment; and ISME, a kiosk-based science museum exhibit that teaches the principles of radio SETI using interactive audio and animation.

1992 - 1995: Director of Software Architecture, Sonic Solutions, San Rafael CA.

I was the technical leader in developing SonicSystem, a distributed digital audio editing system based on FDDI, Macintosh, and proprietary DSP and I/O boards. I designed and implemented a high-performance filesystem, a custom transport protocol, and a system for reserving device bandwidth so that multiple users can share resources without performance conflicts. SonicSystem's core technology was reused in MediaNet, a high-speed network file system for I/O-intensive Macintosh applications. I designed and implemented the entire software data path (client cache and read-ahead mechanism, NuBus DMA system, Macintosh OS hooks). I was responsible for the system-level software of SonicSystem and MediaNet. My role included cross-platform software design, software architecture for Sonic's next generation of audio and video products, and the design of software interfaces for OEM partners.

1985 - 1992: Assistant Professor, CS Division, EECS Department, University of California at Berkeley.

I taught undergraduate courses in operating systems and introductory programming, and graduate courses in operating systems, distributed systems and networks, and multimedia systems. I advised eight Masters and two Ph.D theses. I organized and led several research projects, including:

  • The ACME project produced 1) a network I/O server for digital audio/video on Sun workstations, 2) a distributed C++ toolkit for this server, and 3) teleconferencing and A/V editing applications. I did related projects involving resource reservation and scheduling, file systems, and basic OS mechanisms for digital audio/video.
  • The DASH project developed a new operating system kernel for the Sparc and Sequent Symmetry architectures. DASH pioneered new ideas in security, virtual memory, real-time communication, multiprocessor support, and object-oriented kernel design.
  • The AERO project developed a system for fault-tolerant parallel distributed programming on heterogeneous networks of UNIX workstations.
  • The FORMULA and MOOD projects developed concurrent real-time programming systems for algorithmic computer music, based on Forth and C++ respectively.

Awards

1986: IBM Faculty Development grant.

1987: NSF Presidential Young Investigator award.

Patents

I am the sole inventor on two patents for technology related to MediaNet, several patents related to distributed computing, and a patent for an invention involving 3-D interactive television.

Professional Activities

Program committees:

  • SCoDiS-LaSCoG'2014 workshop
  • 2013 IEEE/ACM Utility Computing and Cloud conference
  • 2012 3rd Workshop on Scalable Computing in Distributed Systems
  • 2012 IEEE/ACM Utility Computing and Cloud conference
  • 2011: 9th International Conference on Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics
  • The 4th IEEE International Workshop on Digital Computing Infrastructure and Applications (Program co-chair)
  • CCGrid 2011 (Program Vice-Chair)
  • PCGrid 2011
  • PCGrid 2010
  • PCGrid 2009
  • 2008 International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences (ISCIS2008)
  • 2008 DAPSYS
  • 2008/2007/2006/2005/2004 GP2PC Workshop (CCGrid conference);
  • 2008 workshop on Economic Models for Distributed Systems (Mardi Gras Conference);
  • 2008 Second Workshop on Desktop Grids and Volunteer Computing (IEEE IPDPS Conference);
  • 2008 workshop on Grid Computing (HICSS conference);
  • 2006 International Conference on eScience and the Grid;
  • 2005 International Conference on eScience and the Grid (co-chair),
  • 2003, 2004, 2005 International Workshop on Global and Peer-to-Peer Computing;
  • 2000 International Computer Music Conference
  • 1995, 1996, 1998: ACM Multimedia conference
Journal refereeing:
  • Guest editor of special issue of Scalable Computing - Practice and Experience (vol. 16 no 2, June 2015)
  • Journal of Grid Computing (member of Editorial Board)
  • Journal of Computer Science and Technology
  • Future Generation Computing Systems
  • ACM Computing Surveys
  • ACM Transactions on programming languages and systems
  • Communications of the ACM
  • ACM Transactions on Computer Systems,
  • ACM Transactions on Graphics, IEEE Computer,
  • IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
  • The Journal of Multimedia Systems and Applications (editorial board member from 1992-2003).

I have given numerous invited talks on my research, including:

2017

  • Science Gateways Community Institute Webinar
  • 2017 BOINC Workshop
  • Berkeley SETI Research Center
2016
  • LASER talks at UC Berkeley and Stanford
  • Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD)
2015
  • University of North Dakota
2014
  • 2014 BOINC Workshop
2013
  • Austin Forum (U. of Texas)
  • Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
  • HUBbub 2013 conference, Indianapolis
2012
  • ASPERA conference on computing in high-energy physics, Hannover Germany.
  • Institute for High Energy Physics, Beijing, China
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
2011
  • Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
  • University of Houston
  • International Desktop Grid Forum meeting, Hannover, Germany
2010
  • Adobe Developer Seminar (San Francisco)
  • SIAM Conference on Parallel Processing and Scientific Computing
  • London Citizen Cyberscience Summit
  • Half-day BOINC tutorial at Supercomputing 2010 conference
2009
  • Institute for High Energy Physics, Beijing, China
  • Genome Informatics Alliance Meeting
  • Grid and Pervasive Computing 2009, Geneva (keynote speaker)
  • International Symposium on Grid Computing, Taipei (keynote speaker)
  • University of Basel, Switzerland
  • NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference, San Jose
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
2008:
  • Geospatial Innovation Facility, UC Berkeley
  • Emtech panel on cloud computing (MIT)
2007:
  • Barcelona Biomedical Research Park
  • Leiden University
  • Math Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley
  • eMentor IT Workshop (Oslo)
  • University of Houston
  • Panel at AAAS meeting in SF
  • Workshop at IEEE IPDPS conference (keynote speaker)
  • University of Extremadura (Merida, Spain)
  • HispaLinux conference (Caceres, Spain)
2006:
  • UCB Neurobiology Dept.
  • Sony Research, Redwood City
  • Singapore University
  • Condor Week (Univ. of Wisconsin)
2005:
  • MIT Internet Application Design workshop
  • UC Berkeley Computer Science Distinguished Lecture
  • Google
  • Amazon.com seminar series
2004:
  • Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications (Sydney)
  • CERN
  • University of Illinois
  • International Computer Science Institute
  • Internet2 meeting, Univ. of Hawaii
2003:
  • Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid
  • University of Paris - Sud
2002:
  • IPDPS conference (keynote speaker)
Pre-2002: talks at Apple, Bell Labs, Bellcore, DEC SRC, HP Labs, IBM Almaden, MIT Media Lab, Stanford, Sun, and Xerox PARC, Europen conference (keynote speaker).

Publications

Refereed journal papers

  1. David P. Anderson, Eric J. Korpela, Dan Werthimer, Jeff Cobb, Bruce Allen. SETI@home: Data Analysis and Findings. The Astronomical Journal 170(2). July 24 2025.
  2. Eric J. Korpela, David P. Anderson, Jeff Cobb, Matt Lebofsky, Wei Liu, Dan Werthimer. SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing. The Astronomical Journal 170(2). July 24 2025.
  3. Bruno J. Strasser, Elise Tancoigne, Jérôme Baudry, Steven Piguet, Helen Spiers, José Luis-Fernandez Marquez, Jérôme Kasparian, François Grey, David Anderson, Chris Lintott. Quantifying online citizen science: Dynamics and demographics of public participation in science. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0293289. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293289. 21 Nov 2023.
  4. David P. Anderson. Globally Scheduling Volunteer Computing. Future Internet 13(9), 229; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi13090229. August 31, 2021.
  5. Zhi-Song Zhang et al. First SETI observations with China’s five-hundred-meter aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST). The Astrophysical Journal 891(2). Mar. 17, 2020.
  6. David P. Anderson. BOINC: A Platform for Volunteer Computing. Journal of Grid Computing 18(1), p. 99-122. DOI 10.1007/s10723-019-09497-9. 2020.
  7. M. Lebofsky et al. The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Public Data, Formats, Reduction and Archiving. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. November 5, 2019.
  8. C.J. Clark et al. Einstein@Home Discovers a Radio-quiet Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsar. Science Advances 4(2). February 2018.
  9. B.P. Abbott et al. First low-frequency Einstein@Home all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in Advanced LIGO data. Phys. Rev. D 96, 122004. 2017.
  10. Zack Gainsforth et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination VIII: Identification of crystalline material in two interstellar candidates. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9). Sept. 2014.
  11. Anna L. Butterworth et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination IV: Scanning transmission X-ray microscopy analyses of impact features in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9), pp. 1562-1593. Sept. 2014.
  12. Veerle J. Sterken et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination X: Impact speeds and directions of interstellar grains on the Stardust dust collector. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9), pp. 1680-1697. Sept. 2014.
  13. Andrew J. Westphal et al. Stardust interstellar preliminary examination I: identification of tracks in aerogel. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9), pp. 1509-1521. Sept. 2014.
  14. Andrew J. Westphal et al. Final reports of the stardust interstellar preliminary examination. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9), pp. 1720-1733. Sept. 2014.
  15. Frank Brenker et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination V: XRF analyses of interstellar dust candidates at ESRF ID 13. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9). Sept. 2014.
  16. David R. Frank et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination II: Curating the interstellar dust collector, picokeystones, and sources of impact tracks. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9), pp. 1522-1547. Sept. 2014.
  17. George J. Flynn et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination VII: Synchrotron X-ray fluorescence analysis of six Stardust interstellar candidates measured with the Advanced Photon Source 2-ID-D microprobe. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9), pp. 1626-1644. Sept. 2014.
  18. H.A. Bechtel et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination III: Infrared spectroscopic analysis of interstellar dust candidates. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9). Sept. 2014.
  19. Alexandre S Simionovic et al. Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination VI: Quantitative elemental analysis by synchrotron X-ray fluorescence nanoimaging of eight impact features in aerogel. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49(9), pp. 1612-1625. Sept. 2014.
  20. Andrew J. Westphal et al. Evidence for interstellar origin of seven dust particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft. Science, Vol. 345 no. 6198 pp. 786-791. 15 August 2014.
  21. Andrew J. Westphal et al. Coordinated Microanalyses of Seven Particles of Probable Interstellar Origin from the Stardust Mission. Microscopy and Microanalysis 20(S3). pp. 1692-1693. August 2014.
  22. Oded Nov, Ofer Arazy, David Anderson. Scientists@Home: What Drives the Quantity and Quality of Online Citizen Science Participation? PLOS One. April 1 2014.
  23. Jesse F. Lawrence et al. MEMS accelerometers and distributed sensing for rapid earthquake characterization. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). 2014.
  24. Holger J. Pletsch et al. Einstein@ Home discovery of four young gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi LAT data. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 779(1). Nov. 26, 2013.
  25. B. Knispel et al. Einstein@Home Discovery of 24 Pulsars in the Parkes Multi-beam Pulsar Survey. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 774(2). August 2013.
  26. B. Allen et al. The Einstein@Home Search for Radio Pulsars and PSR J2007+2722 Discovery. The Astrophysical Journal 773(2). July 2013.
  27. J. Von Korff, P. Demorest, E. Heien, E. Korpela, D. Werthimer, J. Cobb, M. Lebofsky, D. Anderson, B. Bankay, and A. Siemion. Astropulse: A Search for Microsecond Transient Radio Signals Using Distributed Computing. I. Methodology. The Astrophysical Journal, 767(1). 22 March 2013.
  28. J. Aasi et al. Einstein@Home all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S5 data. Phys. Rev. D 87, 042001. 2013.
  29. Eric Heien, Derrick Kondo, David P. Anderson. A Correlated Resource Model of Internet End Hosts. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 23(6), p. 977-984. June 2012.
  30. Bahman Javadi, Derrick Kondo, Jean-Marc Vincent, and David P. Anderson. Discovering Statistical Models of Availability in Large Distributed Systems: An Empirical Study of SETI@home. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 22(11) p. 1896-1903. Nov. 2011.
  31. B. Knispel et al. Arecibo PALFA Survey and Einstein@Home: Binary Pulsar Discovery by Volunteer Computing. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 732,1. April 2011.
  32. Andrew Siemion et al. New SETI sky surveys for radio pulses. Acta Astronautica 67(11-12). pp. 1342-1349. Dec. 1, 2010.
  33. Oded Nov, Ofer Arazy, and David Anderson. Scientists@Home and in the Backyard: Understanding the Motivations of Contributors to Digital Citizen Science. Economics of Networks eJournal. Vol. 2, No. 108. 10 Sep 2010.
  34. B. Knispel et al. (41 authors). Pulsar Discovery by Global Volunteer Computing. Science, Vol. 329. no. 5997, p. 1305. 10 September 2010.
  35. I. Buch, M.J. Harvey, T. Giorgino, D.P. Anderson, and G. De Fabritiis. High-Throughput All-Atom Molecular Dynamics Simulations Using Distributed Computing. J. Chem. Inf. Model, 50 (3) pp 397-403. March 2010.
  36. Trilce Estrada, Michela Taufer, David Anderson. Performance Prediction and Analysis of BOINC Projects: An Empirical Study with EmBOINC. Journal of Grid Computing 7(4) p. 537-554. Dec. 2009.
  37. Eric M. Heien, David P. Anderson, and Kenichi Hagihara. Computing Low Latency Batches with Unreliable Workers in Volunteer Computing Environments. Journal of Grid Computing 7(4) p. 501-518. Dec. 2009.
  38. B. Abbott et al. Einstein@Home search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S4 data. Physical Review D, 79:022001. 2009.
  39. Abbott, B.P. et al. (504 authors). Einstein@Home search for periodic gravitational waves in early S5 LIGO data. Phys. Rev. D 80, 042003. 2009.
  40. Kevin A Douglas, David P Anderson, Robert Bankay, Jeff Cobb, Eric J Korpela, Matt Lebofsky, Joshua Von Korff, Dan Werthimer. Spinoff successes of the SETI@ home project. Astrobiology 7(3). June 1, 2007.
  41. D.P. Anderson, J. Cobb, E. Korpela, M. Lebofsky, and D. Werthimer. SETI@home: An experiment in public-resource computing. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 45 No. 11, pp. 56-61. Nov. 2002.
  42. Oded Nov, Ofer Arazy, David Anderson. Dusting for science: motivation and participation of digital citizen science volunteers. Proceedings of the 2011 iConference. pp. 68-74. 1.
  43. Korpela, E., Werthimer, D., Anderson, D., Cobb, J., and Lebofsky, M., SETI@home: Massively Distributed Computing for SETI, Computing in Science and Engineering, 3, 1, p. 78-83. Jan 1 2001.
  44. D.P. Anderson, Device Reservation in Audio/Video Editing Systems. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 15(2) p. 111-133. May 1997.
  45. D.P. Anderson, Metascheduling for Continuous Media. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 11(3), p. 226-252. Aug. 1993.
  46. D.P. Anderson, Y. Osawa and R. Govindan, A File System for Continuous Media. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 10(4), p. 311-337. Nov. 1992.
  47. D.P. Anderson and P. Chan, Toolkit Support for Multiuser Audio/Video Applications. Computer Communications, 15(6) p. 403-408. July 1992.
  48. D.P. Anderson and G. Homsy, A Continuous Media I/O Server and its Synchronization Mechanism, IEEE Computer. October 1991.
  49. D.P. Anderson and R.J. Kuivila, FORMULA: a Programming Language for Expressive Computer Music, IEEE Computer 24(7), pp 12-21. https://doi.org/10.1109/2.84829. June 1991.
  50. S. Tzou and D.P. Anderson, The Performance of Message-Passing Using Restricted Virtual Memory Remapping, Software - Practice & Experience 21, 3. March 1991.
  51. D. Hernek and D.P. Anderson, Efficient Automated Protocol Implementation Using RTAG, Software - Practice & Experience 20, 9 p. 869- 885. September 1990.
  52. D.P. Anderson and R.J. Kuivila, A System for Computer Music Performance, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 8, 1, 56-82. February 1990.
  53. D.P. Anderson and R.J. Kuivila, Continuous Abstractions for Discrete Event Languages, Computer Music Journal 13, 3, 11-23. Sept. 1989.
  54. D.P. Anderson, Automated Protocol Implementation with RTAG, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 14(3), 291-300. March 1988.
  55. D.P. Anderson and R.J. Kuivila, Accurately Timed Generation of Discrete Musical Events, Computer Music Journal 10, 3, 48-56. Sept. 1986.
  56. D.P. Anderson, Efficient Algorithms for Automatic Viewer Orientation, Computers and Graphics 9, 4, 407-413. 1985.
  57. D.P. Anderson, Techniques for Reducing Pen Plotting Time, ACM Transactions on Graphics 2, 197- 212. 1983.
  58. D.P. Anderson, Hidden Line Elimination in Projected Grid Surfaces, ACM Transactions on Graphics 1(4), 274-288. Oct. 1, 1982.
  59. D.P. Anderson, An Orientation Method for Central Projection Programs, Computers and Graphics 6 , 35-38. 1982.

Magazine articles

  1. D. P. Anderson and J. Kubiatowicz. The World-Wide Computer. Scientific American, March 2002.

Book chapters

  1. D. P. Anderson. "SETI@home". A chapter in "Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the power of disruptive technologies", edited by Andy Oram, O'Reilly and Assoc, 2001.