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Joe Pasquale
is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Engineering
at the
University of California, San Diego,
having served
on the faculty
for 38 years, from 1987 to 2025.
His
research
interests
are
in operating systems, distributed systems and networks,
focusing on performance and reliability
of Internet-scale systems
with highly decentralized control
(e.g., cloud computing and peer-to-peer systems).
His work
has spanned
topics in
cloud computing, peer-to-peer systems,
Internet/Web computing,
I/O system
software and network-based I/O, long-running replicated systems, extended
client/server structures, mobile agents,
packet scheduling for network quality of service (QoS),
operating system/network support for multimedia (audio and video),
TCP/IP performance,
file system I/O performance, multicast routing,
operating system kernel structure, and
process scheduling.
During 1991-94, Pasquale led a team of researchers to architect and build
the Sequoia 2000 Network connecting five UC campuses, one of the first
wide-area high-speed networks to effectively deliver real-time digital video
and audio. He also led the CSE Department's UCSD ActiveWeb project in
1998-2005, one of the first
NSF-funded projects investigating cloud computing architectures.
He
teaches
courses primarily on operating systems,
at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
He has
taught freshman seminars on far-ranging topics
such as gambling theory and the slide rule.
For many years he also led an outreach program to interest high school
students in computer science.
One of his special passions
has been
leading
a math and engineering-oriented study-abroad program
in Rome that he designed for undergraduates.
Pasquale received his doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988 (with dissertation on fundamental problems of decentralized control in large-scale distributed systems) and bachelor's and master's degrees from MIT in 1982 (with MS dissertation on the design and implementation of computer-synthesized musical performance systems). He received numerous awards in both research, including the NSF Presidential Young Investigator PYI Award in 1989, and in teaching, including the UCSD Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003. He was a member of the IDA/DARPA Defense Science Study Group V during 1996-1997. He was the inaugural holder of the J. Robert Beyster Endowed Chair in Engineering, during 1996-2021.