ERSA Archive

Dr Toomas P Plaks

Biography

Toomas P. Plaks received a PhD in computer engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden and a MEng degree in computer engineering and information processing from Tallinn Technical University, Estonia. He has worked in the area of computer engineering, science and mathematics more than 50 years.

He has worked in different universities as senior lecturer and researcher around the world: in England, Sweden, Germany, France, Australia and Estonia, and has been a Chief Engineer on dedicated processors for space and military applications in Computer R&D Division, Tallinn.

His research interests include the design of high-performance application-specific processors, massively parallel computer systems and reconfigurable architectures in signal and image processing, linear algebra, and multimedia applications. Main interests are focusing on the theory and design of regular processor arrays and mapping algorithms onto hardware. Also, his interests include computer networking, mobile and Internet computing, and web-based technologies. He has lead several research projects on computer design and he has received several research grants.

T. Plaks has published over 75 scientific papers including a monograph on a synthesis of regular processor arrays. He has devoted significant energy and time to build up international conferences, symposia and special issues of journals and has brought these up to the internationally highly appreciated level. He is the founder and the Chairman of the International Conference on Engineering of Reconfigurable Systems and Algorithms (ERSA) in Las Vegas, USA (since 1999), and the initiator of Mobile Computing Hardware Architecture (MOCHA) Symposium, Hawaii (2005 — 2007). He is the Guest Editor of a series of special issues (more than 10, including in IEEE TVLSI, ACM TECS, Kluwer, Springer) on designing dedicated processors on reconfigurable computing platform. He has served for a range of editorial boards and conference committees.

In 2012, he established a new journal, “Application Developer News”. It is a journal for industrial and academic researchers, commercial entrepreneurs, and developers. It offers peer-reviewed, rapid-decision publishing, focusing on commercial application development for heterogeneous, reconfigurable, embedded computing systems.

Dr. Plaks is a member of the IEEE, New York Academy of Sciences and the UK chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM SIGDA). The biography of Dr. Plaks is included in the Marquis “Who's Who in Science and Engineering” and “Who’s Who in the World”.

Books:

1. Reconfigurable Computing and Hardware/Software Codesign. Toomas P. Plaks, Marco D. Santambrogio, Donatella Sciuto (Editors). Hindawi Publishing Corp. US SR (April 2, 2008), 92 pages, (ISBN-13: 978-9774540288)
2. Toomas P. Plaks. Piecewise Regular Arrays. Application-Specific Computations. Parallel Processing Series, Vol.1. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, UK. 266 pages. 1999. (ISBN 90-5699-173-6)

Special Issues:

1. Toomas P. Plaks, Ronald DeMara, Jack Jean, Cameron Patterson, Mario Porrmann, guest editors. CAPA'09 Configurable Computing: Configuring Algorithms, Processes, and Architecture Issue III: Developing Configurable Computing Systems. ACM Trans. Embedded Comput. Syst.11(S2): (2012)
2. Toomas P. Plaks, Neil Bergmann, Bernard Pottier, guest editors. CAPA'08 Configurable Computing: Configuring Algorithms, Processes, and Architecture Issue I: Configuring Algorithms and Processes. ACM Trans. Embedded Comput. Syst. 9(1): (2009)
3. Toomas P. Plaks, Neil Bergmann, Bernard Pottier, guest editors. CAPA'08 Configurable Computing: Configuring Algorithms, Processes, and Architecture Issue II: Configuring Hardware Architecture. ACM Trans. Embedded Comput. Syst. 9(2): (2009)
4. Toomas P. Plaks, Marco D. Santambrogio, Donatella Sciuto, guest editors. Reconfigurable Computing and Hardware/Software Codesign. EURASIP J. Emb. Sys.: (2008)
5. Toomas P. Plaks, guest editor. Special Section on Configurable Computing Design-I: High-Level Reconfiguration. IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst. 16(1): (2008)
6. Toomas P. Plaks, guest editor. Special Section on Configurable Computing Design-II: Hardware Level Reconfiguration. IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst. 16(2): (2008)
7. Toomas P. Plaks, guest editor. Engineering of Configurable Systems, IV. The Journal of Supercomputing 32(2): (2005)
8. Toomas P. Plaks, guest editor. Engineering of Configurable Systems, III. The Journal of Supercomputing 30(3): (2004)
9. Toomas P. Plaks, Peter M. Athanas, guest editors. Engineering of Configurable Systems, II. The Journal of Supercomputing 26(3): (2003)
10. Toomas P. Plaks, Peter M. Athanas, guest editors. Engineering of Configurable Systems. The Journal of Supercomputing 26(2): (2003)
11. Toomas P. Plaks, guest editor. Engineering of Reconfigurable Systems. The Journal of Supercomputing 21(2): (2002)
12. Toomas P. Plaks, Graham M. Megson, guest editors. Engineering of Reconfigurable Hardware/Software Objects. The Journal of Supercomputing 19(1): (2001)
13. Toomas P. Plaks, guest editor. Advanced Regular Array Design. Parallel Algorithms Appl. 15(3-4): (2000)