Randal Burns is the Bill and Lisa Stromberg Department Head and a professor in the Department of Computer Science. His research interests lie in building high-performance, scalable data systems that allow scientists to make discoveries through the exploration, mining, and statistical analysis of big data. Recently, he has focused primarily on high-throughput neuroscience but retains a vigorous interest in high-performance computing numerical simulations.
Burns is both a member of and on the steering committee of the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute. He is a member of the Institute for Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (IDIES). He is on the steering committee of the Science of Learning Institute. He was a research staff member in storage systems at IBM’s Almaden Research Center from 1996 to 2002. He earned his BS in Geophysics at Stanford University (1993), and his MS (1997) and PhD (2000) in Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz.