Pamela Abshire is an Assistant Professor
in the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering and the Institute
for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her
areas of specialty are in the fields of VLSI circuit design and bioengineering.
Dr. Abshire's research focuses on better understanding the tradeoffs between
performance and resources in natural and engineered systems.
Prior
to her arrival at the University of Maryland in November, 2001, she was
a graduate student in the Sensory Communications and Microsystems Lab in
the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Johns Hopkins
University. Her advisor was Andreas G. Andreou, and her dissertation
topic was Sensory Information Processing Under Physical Constraints.
Her research interests include information theory for physical systems,
noise theory for electronic, photonic, and biological systems, analysis
and design of sensory information processing systems, and algorithm, VLSI
circuit, and microsystem design, especially for low power applications.
Dr. Abshire was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina,
and grew up in the Roanoke Valley in southwestern Virginia. She graduated
as valedictorian of the class of 1988 from Salem
High School in Salem, VA. From 1985 to 1988 she also attended the Roanoke
Valley Governor's School for Science and Technology in Roanoke, VA.
She received her B.S. degree in Physics with Honor in 1992 from the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. Between 1992 and 1995
she worked as a Research Engineer in the Bradycardia Research Department
of Medtronic, Inc. in Minneapolis,
MN. In 1995 she began her graduate education in the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The
Johns Hopkins University. She received her M.S. degree in Electrical
and Computer Engineering in 1997 and completed her Ph.D. degree in Electrical
and Computer Engineering in October 2001.
Revised: December 14, 2001.