Boon Thau Loo is the RCA Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in Electrical and Systems Engineering. As the Senior Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Global Initiatives at Penn Engineering, he oversees all doctoral and professional master’s programs, serving approximately 5,000 students. Dr. Loo also leads efforts to expand Penn Engineering’s non-degree programs, collaborates with Penn Global to enhance the school’s international presence, guides strategic investments in Engineering Entrepreneurship, and oversees the professional development of students across all levels.
Dr. Loo has spearheaded numerous initiatives, including the creation of the Penn Engineering Online organization, the accelerated master’s program, annual graduate student awards, the Dean’s doctoral scholarship, the Dean’s master’s fellowship for under-resourced students, the Dean’s Bridge-to-Ph.D. master’s fellowship, MCIT Online (the first Ivy League fully online master’s degree program in computer science for non-computer science majors), MSE-DS Online (an online master’s in data science), MSE-AI Online (an online master’s in artificial intelligence), lifelong learning programs for alumni, a school-wide professional development course for master’s students, and semester-long academic field studies for master’s students.
In addition to his academic roles, Dr. Loo is a seasoned entrepreneur. In 2015, he co-founded Termaxia, a software-defined, energy-efficient big data storage startup based in Philadelphia, which was acquired in 2020 by Frontiir, a leading technology company in Southeast Asia. He currently serves as an executive advisor to Frontiir’s CEO and CTO. Previously, in 2014, he co-founded Gencore Systems (Netsil), a cloud performance analytics company that commercialized his research on the Scalanytics declarative network analytics platform. Netsil was acquired in 2018 by Nutanix Inc., a public cloud infrastructure company. Netsil was one of the first faculty-led startups from Penn Engineering’s CIS department, and its acquisition marked a significant milestone for faculty-led startup exits at Penn Engineering.
Dr. Loo earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, an M.S. from Stanford, and a B.S. with highest honors from UC Berkeley. His research expertise includes distributed data management systems, Internet-scale query processing, and the application of data-centric techniques and formal methods to the design, analysis, and implementation of networked systems. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers and mentored sixteen Ph.D. students and three postdocs, many of whom have gone on to achieve significant academic and professional success. His work has earned him numerous accolades, including the David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize (2006), ACM SIGMOD Dissertation Award (2007), NSF CAREER Award (2009), AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2012), Penn’s Emerging Inventor of the Year Award (2018), Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching (2021), and the University Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (2022).