Todd Austin is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His research interests include computer architecture, robust and secure system design, hardware and software verification, and performance analysis tools and techniques. Currently Todd is director of C-FAR, the Center for Future Architectures Research, a multi-university SRC/DARPA funded center that is seeking technologies to scale the performance and efficiency of future computing systems. Prior to joining academia, Todd was a Senior Computer Architect in Intel's Microcomputer Research Labs, a product-oriented research laboratory in Hillsboro, Oregon. Todd is the first to take credit (but the last to accept blame) for creating the SimpleScalar Tool Set, a popular collection of computer architecture performance analysis tools. Todd is co-author (with Andrew Tanenbaum) of the undergraduate computer architecture textbook, "Structured Computer Architecture, 6th Ed."  In addition to his work in academia, Todd is co-founder of SimpleScalar LLC and InTempo Design LLC.  In 2002, Todd was a Sloan Research Fellow, and in 2007 he received the ACM Maurice Wilkes Award for "innovative contributions in Computer Architecture including the SimpleScalar Toolkit and the DIVA and Razor architectures." Todd is an IEEE Fellow, and he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin in 1996.


Here is my University of Michigan College of Engineering teaching biography (written by the Media and Marketing Office):

In his time at the University of Michigan, Professor Todd Austin has earned a reputation as an outstanding mentor and professor. The evaluation scores for the courses he teaches, Computer Architecture (EECS 470) and Microarchitecture (EECS 573), are consistently high, and even hitting a perfect 5.0 on occasion.

Professor Austin has redesigned and updated EECS 470 based on his experience as a processor designer at Intel in the MicroComputer Research Labs, allowing him to share a perspective on computer design rarely found in classrooms. One of his most notable innovations was the introduction of SimpleScalar into his courses, a toolset he designed, which gives researchers easily extensible, portable, high-performance test beds for computer design. It has been widely adopted as a research tool, and Professor Austin has worked with other institutions to incorporate it into their curricula and teaching as well. It is now used by more than 50 universities and 60 courses around the world.

Students and colleagues alike praise Professor Austin's energy, enthusiasm and passion for the subject matter he teaches. He creates a dynamic classroom environment that engages students and motivates them to actively participate in their own educational experience. He is known for his approachability, the open communication he encourages in class and during office hours and, according to one student, his breadth of knowledge: "How many professors can write the SPICE net-list for a dynamic scheduler, hack a compiler and loader, simulate network traffic and optimize encryption algorithms all in the same day?".

Professor Austin has earned numerous awards, including the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award in 2002 and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2001. He earned his master's degree in computer engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology and his PhD, in computer science, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.