Randal Abler: Extended Biography


Randal Abler started his undergraduate at Georgia Tech in Electrical Engineering in 1982. He worked for Dr Jim Tanner and Dr A. Stanford in the Georgia Tech School of Physics developing computer based grading and computer assisted learning systems during his sophmore and junior years. During the later half of Randal's senior year he worked with Dr John Peatman's Microprocessor Based Design lab. This instructional lab centered around the use of Motorola 68701 and 68HC11 microcontrollers and assembly language programming to control various devices such as stepper motors and keypads. Randal learned in depth use of the Unix systems used as part of the programming enviroment in this lab. Randal contined working with Dr Peatman's lab as a graduate student and taught the course during one quarter.

Randal took a graduate co-op job with Lockheed Georgia during his second year of graduate school. He worked in Lockheed's Antenna division developing computer models and test procedures for UHF phased array antennas.

Starting 1986, Randal worked full time with Dr Cecil Alford in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical Engineering on parallel computer architectures, while continuing part time graduate work. Randal was involved in the VLSI design of high performance parallel processors. He also provided Unix systems support for the multiple CAD stations used to design and simulate the processor system. The system was designed to compute real time six-degree of freedom motion models of multiple objects. Randal also was involved in developing software operating systems and drivers for the parallel computers.

Randal received his Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1991 from Georgia Tech. During 1993 Randal worked with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering's network support staff in supporting and upgrading ECE's departmental network.

In December of 1993 Randal hired on with the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT) at Georgia Tech, working with Fred Dyer and Dr John Copeland in the Systems Engineering Group. Randal was involved in setting up Xnet, GCATT's ATM test network providing data and video transport to three locations on the Georgia Tech campus. Randal assisted with the Georgia Tech Office of Information Technology's Futurenet Program, which involved transitioning from a Ethernet/FDDI backbone for GT to a ATM backbone. During the summer of 1996 the GCATT building was completed. Randal designed the data network for the GCATT building based on and ATM backbone, and supervised the testing and installation as well as the operation of the network for the first year.  Randal was also involved in the inital design and implementation of the network core of the initial NSF funded vBNS hub for Georgia Tech, which later evolved into the SoX hub at Georgia Tech as part of Internet 2.

In July of 1997 the GCATT Systems Engineering group changed its name to the Communications Systems Center (CSC).
Working with CSC, Randal Abler was involved in several  projects  involving ATM, Frame Relay, Network desigh, IP Networking, and IP based videoconferencing.

Randal received his PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in August of 2000, for the thesis titled "QoS and Fairness in ATM based MPLS switches implementing packet VCMerge".

Randal is currently an Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, with a joint apointment to  GTREP  and  ECE .