Bruce H. McCormick

Bruce Howard McCormick (1930 - 2007) was an American computer scientist, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Computer Science, and founding director of the Brain Networks Lab at Texas A&M University.

Biography

McCormick took his BS in Physics from MIT in 1950, followed by two years on a Fulbright Scholarship to Cambridge University, England. There he studied quantum field theory with Professor Paul Dirac, founder of the field of quantum mechanics and holder of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Professor Erwin Schrödinger. McCormick returned to the U.S. to take his PhD in Physics at Harvard University in 1955, with the thesis "Two investigations in meson theory in the non-relativistic limit". He then became a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Kathy Flores (2007). [http://www.cs.tamu.edu/news/items?id=1902 "Dr. Bruce H. McCormick"] Texas A&M University. Retrieved 9 July 2008.]

In 1957 McCormick accepted a post as staff physicist at the Alvarez Hydrogen Bubble Chamber Group at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The Chamber Group was led by Dr. Luis Alvarez, who later won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1960 Dr. McCormick began 12 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was a professor of physics, computer science, and bioengineering. Afterward, he served as head of the electrical engineering and computer science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. McCormick joined Texas A&M in 1983 as the first department head of the newly formed Department of Computer Science in the Dwight Look College of Engineering. In August 2005 Dr. McCormick retired from Texas A&M but continued his research here, exploring and understanding the complexity and scaling properties of the brain's microcircuit structure.

McCormick passed away the first week of December 2007 in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

Work

McCormick's research interests were Scientific visualization and modeling, computer vision, neural networks and brain mapping.

Image Processing Computer project

He was also initiated and directed the ILLIAC III Image Processing Computer project throughout its history and received the then new National Eye Institute's largest grant to develop the first imaging of blood flow and macular degeneracy in the human retina. The ILLIAC III was a fine-grained SIMD pattern recognition computer built by the University of Illinois in 1966. It's initial task was image processing of bubble chamber experiments used to detect nuclear particles. Later it was used on biological images.

The machine was destroyed in a fire, caused by a Variac shorting on one of the wooden-top benches, in 1968. It was rebuilt in the early 1970s, and the core parallel-processing element of the machine, the Pattern Articulation Unit, was successfully implemented. In spite of this and the productive exploration of other advanced concepts, such as multiple-radix arithmetic, the project was eventually abandoned. McCormick was the leader of the project throughout its history.

Scientific visualization

In August 1985 McCormick organized and chaired the first Brain Mapping Machine Design Workshop, which was held in College Station. Two years later in 1987, he developed and promoted the concept of "scientific visualization" at the National Science Foundation Advisory Panel on Graphics, Image Processing, and Workstations.

In the 1987 publication "Visualization in Scientific Computing" the use of scientific visualization to represent the solutions obtained in computational science and engineering is discussed. The short- and long-term needs of those who use visualization tools and those who create them are addressed. For the user a three-tiered model environment is beginning to emerge that categorizes visualization systems by such factors as power, cost, and software support. Workstations with access to supercomputers are also required. The need to educate the scientific and engineering research communities about the available equipment is also discussed, and the available software and hardware are described. [Thomas A. DeFanti, Maxine D. Brown and Bruce H. McCormick (1989). "Visualization: Expanding Scientific and Engineering Research Opportunities". In: "Computer", vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 12-25, Aug. 1989.]

Neurocomputing

More recently end 1990s McCormick invented and patented the Knife-Edge Scanning Microscope to generate data for constructing anatomically correct models of mouse brain networks. His last research in the new millennium focusses on Neurocomputing, Neuroimaging and the invention of the Brain Tissue Scanner (BTS).

To explore and understand the topology and geometry of brain architecture at a neuronal level of detail requires mapping brain microstructure by 3D reconstruction of mammalian brain. The brain tissue scanner is a new instrument, that allows the reconstruction of mammalian brain architecture. The instrument has been designed to volume digitize a brain specimen embedded in a plastic block. The instrument delivers an aligned three-dimensional mesh of uniform volume elements, each assigned a digital signal amplitude for each optical channel used in scanning the specimen. [Bruce H. McCormick (2002). "Brain tissue scanner enables brain microstructure surveys". In: "Neurocomputing". Vol: 44-46. pp. 1113-1118.]

The Brain Tissue Scanner allows the reconstruction of mammalian brain architectures by scanning and generating 1 Tbyte of volumetric brain data per day. McCormick has been building a large-scale, distributed database system to store and process this massive data. The database system provides an exoskeleton to the 3D reconstruction and modeling software, and provides a seamless integration with HTML/XML for user interface and with XML for data exchange. The database exoskeleton can be isolated from inevitable changes in the reconstruction and modeling software. [Wonryull Koh and Bruce H. McCormick (2002). "Brain microstructure database system: an exoskeleton to 3D reconstruction and modeling". In: " Neurocomputing" Vol: 44-46, pp. 1099 - 1105.]

Publications

McCormick has authored numerous books and articles. Books: [ [http://research.cs.tamu.edu/bnl/publications.html Bruce H. McCormick] Publications 1987-2007.] [ [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/m/McCormick:Bruce_H=.html Bruce H. McCormick] . List of publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server.] [ [http://portal.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100577497 Bruce H McCormick] ACM author profile page.]
* 1966. "Design concepts for an information resource center with option of an attached automated laboratory". With A. M. Richardson.
* 1968. "Pattern articulation unit of Illiac III; homogenous Boolean functions in the iterative array."William J. Watson and Richard T. Borovec.
* 1968. "Illiac III programming manual". Edited with R. Lansford.
* 1970. "Illiac III computer system; brief description and annotated bibliography".
* 1971. "Illiac III reference manual". Edited with B.J. Nordmann and others.
* 1971. "Interval generalization of switching theory". With R.S. Michalski.
* 1972. "Analysis of texture". With S. N. Jayaramamurthy.
* 1987. "Visualization in Scientific Computing". Edited with Thomas A. DeFanti and Maxine D. Brown. ACM Press.

;Articles, a selection:
* 1987. "The Usable Intersection of PC Graphics and NTSC Video Recording". With D.J. Sandin. In: "IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications". Oct. 1987, pp. 50-58.
* 1987. "Visualization in Scientific Computing". With T.A. DeFanti and M.D. Brown. In: "Computer Graphics". Vol. 21, No. 6, Nov. 1987.
* 1988. "Scientific Animation Workstations". With M.D. Brown. in: "SuperComputing". Fall 1988, pp. 10-13.
* 1989. "Scientific Animation Workstations: Creating an Environment for Remote Research, Education, and Communication". With M.D. Brown. In: "Academic Computing;;. Feb. 1989, pp. 10-12, 55-57.
* 1989. "Insight Through Images". With M.D. Brown. In: "Unix Review". Mar. 1989, pp. 42-50.
* 1989. "Visualization: Expanding Scientific and Engineering Research Opportunities". With Thomas A. DeFanti and Maxine D. Brown. In: "Computer". vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 12-25, Aug., 1989
* 1990. "Advanced visualization environments: knowledge-based image modeling". In: "Visualization in supercomputing". July 1990. Pp 135-150.
* 1997. "Grid generation for brain visualization at the cellular and tissue level". With David A. Batte. In: "CNS '96: Proceedings of the annual conference on Computational neuroscience : trends in research, 1997". New York : Plenum Press.

References

External links

* [http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/mccormic/ Bruce H. McCormick] at Texas A&M University.