PLP 2e cover photo of Michael Scott

About the Author

Michael L. Scott is a professor and past chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester.  He received his Ph.D. in computer sciences in 1985 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  His research interests lie at the intersection of programming languages, operating systems, and high level computer architecture, with an emphasis on parallel and distributed computing.  He is the designer of the Lynx distributed programming language and a co-designer of the Charlotte and Psyche parallel operating systems, the Bridge parallel file system, and the Cashmere and InterWeave shared memory systems.  His MCS mutual exclusion lock, co-designed with John Mellor-Crummey, is used in a variety of commercial and academic systems.  Several other algorithms, co-designed with Maged Michael and Bill Scherer, appear in the java.util.concurrent standard library. 

Dr. Scott is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.  He has served on a wide variety of program committees and grant review panels, and has been a principal or co-investigator on grants from the NSF, ONR, DARPA, NASA, the Departments of Energy and Defense, the Ford Foundation, Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP), Sun Microsystems, Intel, and IBM.  He has contributed to the GRE advanced exam in computer science, and is the author of some 95 refereed publications.  In 2003 he chaired the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles.  He received a Bell Labs Doctoral Scholarship in 1983 and an IBM Faculty Development Award in 1986.  In 2001 he received the University of Rochester’s Robert and Pamela Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching. 


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Last Change: 22 February 2009 / Michael Scott's email address