Bob Edmison

Collegiate Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech University

Bob Edmison was born in Virginia in the US and is currently a Collegiate Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech University. He has spent over 20 years as a professional software engineer and has been employed by his university since 2001. He enjoys some audio engineering on the side for his local church and has tried over one thousand different kinds of beer.

Economics, Political Science & Education

He briefly studied engineering but was unable to pass the mathematics classes, leading him to reconsider this as a career. He had always expressed an interest in the social sciences, coming from a family where conversations often revolved around current affairs. He decided to complete a double major in economics and political science, giving him the opportunity to complete undergraduate research on labour movements in Europe.

For a time he studied the same area at the master’s level but shifted towards education with a focus on instructional technology, due to his long-held interest in technology growing up. He was presented with the opportunity to go through a data engineering program for what was then EDS, now HP Enterprise, and from here began his career in computer science.

Exploring Different Fields & Expertise

Bob’s career in software development has been as much about learning different subjects as learning technologies and tools. In his role as technical support for the US Defense Department, his team was responsible for developing tools to decide how to move troops from potential combat areas to other places around the world. At its core, it was an airline scheduling widget. However, a huge amount of variables would have to be taken into account such as whether people needed respirators and if there were altitude restrictions. For other development projects, he needed to understand the military’s medical examination process and learned a huge amount about medical science. These projects involved a huge amount of understanding of areas completed unrelated to computer science, drawing heavily from his diverse background.

At another company, he learned how library science worked and utilised his liberal arts background. Another project dealt with gardening, where he learned about weeds, plants, and fertilisers. Developing software was the skill set with which he could explore these interesting and traditionally unrelated areas.

In October 2001, Bob joined Virginia Tech working at a lab called Software Technologies. Here the focus was on nuclear non-proliferation, and his work here was discussed at the highest levels of seniority in the US government. Since then, he has done a huge amount for the university both within the department and across others. In 2020, he was accepted into the teaching faculty where he is now on a full-time teaching track.

Seeing the Bigger Picture in Computer Science

There was a heavy leaning toward national security in his undergraduate degree, helping him understand how various groups would interact in making policy decisions. Macroeconomics, that is, economics at the country level, was also a core focus for him. As a software engineer, this aided him in understanding how the projects he works on affect others; he could see more of the bigger picture.

“One of the things that a formal degree gives you, is it helps you to see the larger context of the work that you’re doing. In my data structures course, we spend a lot of time talking about the social implications of algorithm design. We have to think about how technology can affect people other than ourselves.”

He believes that in a world where technology does so much on our behalf, it is crucial to look at things with a broader lens. Programming is important, but having experience with areas outside of just programming can be beneficial. Asking the right questions can be the difference between making good and bad decisions, and for him, it was his non-traditional computing background that opened up this possibility.

Diversity in Computer Science

As a discipline, he notes that they haven’t done a great job of making it clear that anyone can be a computer scientist. There’s no such thing as a ‘computer science gene’.

This has led to a lot of people in computer science departments looking like him, there’s not a huge variation. He believes the field is paying the price for that now, with huge social problems being presented by many new technologies. However, he has hope that things can improve, especially if the younger generations are reached at the high school level. Opening a young and diverse group of minds to computer science skills may just be the catalyst for a brighter industry.