Jeffrey Vitter Email & Phone Number

New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

I consult extensively on areas revolving around big data, databases, data compression, networking, telecommunications, and design and analysis of algorithms, including providing expert witness services. I have also developed successful genealogy databases and strategies. As a consultant, I have co-developed several patents and authored numerous publications. The companies where I have consulted include Alston & Bird; Apple Computer; AT&T Labs–Research; Baidu Research; Burman, Critton, Luttier & Coleman; Center for Computing Sciences (formerly Supercomputing Research Center); Fish & Richardson; GoodJob; Google; IBM Academic Information Systems; IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center; Institute for Defense Analyses; Knowledge Engineering, Inc.; Lucent Technologies; Microsoft; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy; Morrison & Foerster; Paul Hastings; Teradata; Universities Space Research Association; and Xerox PARC.

New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

I serve as adjunct professor of computer science at Tulane University, where I am involved in research on geometric computing and big data.

I was a Distinguished Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Mississippi (a.k.a. Ole Miss), where I served as the 17th chancellor of the university from January 2016–January 2019. Since July 2020, I now have an Emeritus designation. The University of Mississippi is the flagship and largest university in Mississippi, with about 2,200 faculty members, 10,600 staff, 23,250 FTE students, and an annual budget of $2.5 billion. It is ranked by the Carnegie Foundation in its top category, R1: Doctoral Universities — Very high research activity, which represents the top 2 1/2% of colleges and universities nationally. UM is a comprehensive institution of 17 colleges and schools, spanning the main campus in Oxford, the UM Medical Center in Jackson, and four satellite campuses. The UM Medical Center is the state's only academic medical center. Each year UMMC has over 1 million patient visits. Its telemedicine program is ranked in the top 10 nationally. UM is a sea-grant and space-grant institution. It houses the field station in Abbeville, Barksdale Honors College, Barbour Center for Manufacturing Excellence, Lott Leadership Institute, Center for Intelligence & Security Studies, Croft Institute for International Studies, Chinese Language Flagship Program, McLean Institute for Public Service & Community Engagement, Institute of Child Nutrition, National Center for Natural Products Research, National Center for Physical Acoustics, and Gertrude Ford MIND Research Center.My research focuses upon big data and data science. I helped develop the field of external memory algorithms, addressing the communication bottleneck between fast internal memory and slow external storage. Other aspects deal with compressed data structures, data compression, databases, and data analytics. Details appear at cs.OleMiss.edu/vitter.

I was provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of Kansas (a.k.a. KU) in Lawrence, Kansas, an AAU institution comprising roughly 2,800 faculty members, 7,200 staff, 28,100 students, and an annual budget of $1.2 billion, spanning the main campus in Lawrence (with 10 colleges and schools), the Edwards campus in Overland Park, Kansas; and the Medical Center in Kansas City, Wichita, and Salina, Kansas. As provost, I was the chief academic and operations officer for the Lawrence and Edwards campuses. I oversaw strategic planning and implementation (see our strategic plan "Bold Aspirations" at http://provost.ku.edu/strategic-plan), with a focus of achieving KU's vision as a top-tier public international research university. The plan was our mechanism for transformation in four important areas: energizing undergraduate education, elevating doctoral education, driving discovery and innovation, and engaging scholarship for public impact. Drivers include developing synergies, people, diversity, resources, and infrastructure. I oversaw the creation of the first-ever university-wide KU Core curriculum, expansion of the Schools of Engineering and Business, boosting multidisciplinary research and funding around four strategic initiatives, alumni outreach and furthering the goals of the capital campaign, major growth of technology commercialization and corporate partnerships, and administrative reorganization and efficiency. Along with being provost, my tenure home at KU was the Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. Further details appear at http://www.vitter.org/jsv/.

I served as provost, executive vice president for academics, and professor of computer science & engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. As provost and EVP from 2008-2009, I had the responsibility of chief academic officer for an AAU university of over 48,000 students, 2,700 faculty members, and 10 colleges and schools. In addition, I oversaw the academic mission of the Texas A&M University campuses in Galveston, Texas and Doha, Qatar. In collaboration with deans and faculty, I successfully launched a number of important recruiting efforts and far-reaching faculty initiatives, including those dealing with faculty start-up allocations, sustaining multidisciplinary initiatives, balanced scorecard reviews, and diversity. Most significantly, I initiated and led the campus-wide development of the University's Academic Master Plan. Further details appear at http://www.vitter.org/jsv/.

I served as the Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science and Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. As dean, I oversaw the discovery, learning, and engagement activities of the College's seven academic departments (Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Computer Sciences, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics), which consisted of approximately 325 faculty members, 1,000 graduate students, and 2,800 undergraduate majors. The College of Science had primary oversight over the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), one of the world's leading centers in computer security, and it participated in several other university centers, including Discovery Park. Roughly speaking, the College of Science's annual external sponsored program expenditures of about $60 million accounted for one-fourth of the university's total, and the courses offered by the college accounted for one-fourth of the total university student contact hours. Further details appear at http://www.vitter.org/jsv/.

From 1993 to 2002, I held a distinguished professorship as the Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Professor of Computer Science in the College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. I served as chair of the Department of Computer Science at Duke from 1993-2001 and as co-director and a founding member of Duke's Center for Geometric and Biological Computing from 1997-2002. I helped lead the department to a top-20 ranking — through stellar faculty hires, dynamic strategic plans, a departmental culture of inclusiveness, comprehensive curriculum redesign, administrative reorganization, substantial growth in undergraduate and graduate programs, a successful industry partners program, and large increases in sponsored research. Further details appear at http://www.vitter.org/jsv/.

I spent the 1998-1999 academic year on sabbatical at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France in Jean Daniel Boissonat's PRISME computational geometry research group (subsequently morphed into GEOMETRICA).

I spent the Spring 1997 semester on sabbatical at Lucent Technologies--Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ working in Avi Silberschatz's database group.

I served as professor of computer science at Brown University from 1988 until going to Duke University in 1993. Previously I was associate professor with tenure (1985-1988) and assistant professor (1980-1985) at Brown. Further details appear at http://www.vitter.org/jsv/.

I spent the 1986-1987 academic year on sabbatical at INRIA Rocquencourt, France in the late and great Philippe Flajolet's ALGO group on mathematical analysis of algorithms.

I spent one day per week during the 1986-1987 academic year on sabbatical at Ecole Normale Supérieure on rue d'Ulm in Paris, France in Claude Puech's Computer Science Department.

Bs With Highest Honors, Mathematics

Phd, Computer Science

Mba, Management