john t. pinkston, ph.d.
Professor, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Dr. Pinkston is presently a Professor in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County).

He received the BSE degree with highest honors from Princeton University in 1964, and the PhD degree from MIT in 1967, both in Electrical Engineering. His graduate work concentrated in the area of Information Theory and Coding Theory. His thesis was on the theory of representing outputs of information sources using the minimum number of symbols while still maintaining a specified fidelity. The thesis was entitled "Encoding Independent Sample Information Sources.

He came to UMBC in September of 1997, following a career in government and industrial research. He retired from a 25 year career at the National Security Agency, having worked mostly in the Research and Technology organizations, with his last assignment as Chief of the Agency's Office of Research.

For a 7 year period in the 1980's, he worked in the private sector as vice president and Chief Scientist for the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp (MCC), a cooperative research venture owned by approximately 20 U.S. computer and electronics companies. He returned to NSA in 1991.

His research interests include Information Security, Signal Processing, and Communication and Coding Theory.