Rick Bunt's Home Page

University of Saskatchewan

In my CIO office Rick Bunt
B.Sc. (Queen's), M.Sc., Ph.D. (Toronto)

Professor Emeritus
Department of Computer Science
At the University's retirement banquet

I came to the University of Saskatchewan and the Department of Computer Science as a fuzzy-cheeked Assistant Professor in 1972 and retired in 2014, 506 months (42 years + 2 months) later, as a fuzzy-cheeked senior. I was promoted to Full Professor in 1980, served as Department Head from 1986 to 1991, was Associate Dean for Science in the College of Arts and Science from 1998 to 2000, and was the university's Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Associate Vice-President for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) from 2001 until I retired in 2014.

Over the 30+ years I was a practicing academic (1972 to 2001+) the research my students and I did addressed various issues affecting the performance of computer systems. I was a founding member of the DISCUS Research Group and supervised the successful completion of 35 graduate student theses at the Ph.D. and M.Sc. levels. Some of the projects I led over those years are described here. Finally, although my research was very much on the applied side, I retired with an Erdös number of 2!

My CV. Selected publications. Selected presentations.

Celebrating the CS Department's Golden Anniversary

Our department celebrated its 50th anniversary in September 2018 and many former students, faculty and staff joined us in Saskatoon for a wonderful weekend. Some highlights are available here. For the occasion I put together a collection of personal reminiscences from each of the 10 folks who served as Department Head over the 50 years ("Heads and Tales").

We had a great turnout for the
gala banquet.
The department's 4 most recent
retirees, all of whom attended,
were immortalized in a cariacture.

Among the many old photos on display were some I had assembled for our 35th anniversary in 2003.

Congress 2007
From 2005 to 2007 I was co-executive sponsor and co-chair of the organizing committee for the 2007 edition of the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at the U of S. More than 5,000 folks enjoyed the university's hospitality over the course of a very busy two weeks.

Activities Outside the University
I was an early participant in (and maintain a continuing interest in) the national conversation around the development of Canada's digital research infrastructure (ref 2011 CANHEIT presentation). This critical initiative gained considerable momentum over the years, leading ultimately to the creation of a national body called The Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Some of my early views on the role of universities in the development and delivery of this crucial infrastructure were summarized in a 2014 report. Over the years I served on the Boards of three of the participating organizations: Compute Canada from 2016 until its dissolution in 2022; CANARIE from 2009 to 2014; and the Canadian University Council of CIOs (CUCCIO) from 2006 to 2012.

I was a founding member of CUCCIO and served on its Board from the time of its founding in 2006 until 2012 and served as its first Vice-President from 2006 to 2008. In 2008 I became the first elected President and served in that capacity until 2010. In 2016 I authored an historical account of the organization's first decade to help celebrate their 10-year anniversary and in June of 2017 I was honoured to receive the CUCCIO Community Award.

For many years I was active with NSERC (the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council), one of Canada's three primary granting councils. I was a member of the (then one) Grants Selection Committee for Computing and Information Science (GSC 07) from 1989 to 1992 and chaired the Committee for the 1991/92 competition; I served on the first Reallocations Committee from 1992 to 1994; and I was Group Chair for the (then two) Grants Selection Committees in Computing and Information Science (GSC's 330 and 331) from 2000 to 2003 and a member of the Committee on Research Grants. In 2003 I was one of 38 U of S researchers honoured by NSERC for 25 years of continuous funding.

Finally, I was a long-time contributor to ACM's special interest group for performance evaluation, SIGMETRICS, and served as both General Chair (1987) and Program Chair (1994) of their prestigious international conference on the Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems.

Personal Interests

Some of my personal pursuits over the years (complete with pictures) can be found here.

The University of Saskatchewan is located near Canada's geographic centre -- in the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the air is clean and the sun always shines.

This page was last modified on April 4, 2024.