Linda Torczon

Senior Research Scientist

Research Interests
Linda Torczon's research interests include code generation, interprocedural dataflow analysis and optimization, and programming environments. In the code generation realm, she published a set of improvements to graph coloring register allocation. She is also one of the key implementors of an optimizing compiler for Fortran. In the area of interprocedural analysis and optimization, she developed techniques for interprocedural constant propagation and recompilation analysis. She also completed a study on the effectiveness of several interprocedural constant propagation techniques and collaborated on a study of the effectiveness of inline substitution. In the programming environment arena, she was one of the driving forces behind the ParaScope programming environment project at Rice. She was a principal architect of the framework for whole program analysis in the ParaScope programming environment. Techniques that she developed are widely used in industrial and research compilers.

Linda Torczon is a principal investigator on the Platform-Aware Compilation Environment project (PACE), a DARPA-sponsored project that is developing an optimizing compiler environment which automatically adjusts its optimizations and strategies to new platforms. From 1990 to 2000, Dr. Torczon served as executive director of the Center for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. In this capacity, she coordinated extensive research efforts, education and outreach programs, and technology transfer activities. She is a co-editor of the CRPC Handbook of Parallel Computation, intended as a resource for computer science and application researchers, as well as for computational science and parallel computing education and training. She also served as the executive director of HiPerSoft, of the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute, and of the Virtual Grid Application Development Software Project (VGrADS).

Professional Activities
Linda Torczon has been involved in activities intended to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities entering mathematics and science related fields, particularly the field of computational science and engineering. With Ken Kennedy, she has initiated several CRPC outreach activities, including the CRPC GirlTECH program and the Girl Games effort. She has made presentations to students participating in Expanding Your Horizons, The Galveston Bay Project, and Girl Games programs that encourage middle school girls to pursue technical careers. She has made presentations to K-12 teachers as part of GirlTECH and other Rice University programs aimed at improving mathematical and computational skills among K-12 teachers. She served on the Shared Decision Making Team of The Rice School/La Escuela Rice, a Houston Independent School District K-8 laboratory school. Finally, as tutorial chair for the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, she directed an NSF-funded tutorial program that brought faculty members from undergraduate institutions, particularly women's colleges and institutions with large minority enrollments, to the conference and tutorials.

Dr. Torczon was an editor on the volume The Sourcebook of Parallel Computing (with her colleagues Jack Dongarra, Ian Foster, Geoffrey Fox, William Gropp, Ken Kennedy, and Andy White. This book describes many of the results of research in the Center for Research on Parallel Computation. She is the author of Engineering a Compiler, with her colleague Keith Cooper. This book is intended as a textbook for a senior-level course in compiler construction, as well as a reference for professionals.