Jesse H. Poore, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, former co-director of the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences (JICS) and director of the UT-ORNL Science Alliance, died on April 25 at his home.
Poore came to UT in 1986. He served as co-director of JICS from 2000 to 2005; director of the Science Alliance from 2000 to 2011; and UT System vice president for information technology and chief information officer from 2008 to 2009. He taught computer science and software engineering courses for more than twenty-five years and was appointed to the Ericsson-Harlan D. Mills Chair in Software Engineering in 1998.
Poore’s research program at UT focused on the economical production of high-quality software. He supervised twenty-six graduate students’ research, and he said their graduation and career success were his greatest source of fulfillment. In 2002, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society recognized Poore’s work with its highest award in software engineering, the Harlan D. Mills Award, for significant contributions to function-based software development and statistical software testing.
Prior to coming to UT, Poore was director of the Computing Center and associate professor of mathematics at Florida State University and held various leadership positions at the Georgia Institute of Technology. While on sabbatical from UT, Poore was a guest senior scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for experimental software engineering in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 2006.
Poore received the Faculty Public Service Award from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1999. His other public service work included being a program manager for the National Science Foundation from 1974 to 1975; a member of the President’s Federal Data Processing Study to assess scientific computing needs at all national laboratories in 1978; and executive director of the Committee on Science and Technology in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC, in 1983. He was vice president for networking at the Southeastern Universities Research Association from 1984 to 1989; a member of a National Research Council panel on statistical methods in software engineering for defense systems from 2002 to 2003; and a member of the 2010 Census Program for Evaluations and Experiments with the National Academy of Sciences.
Poore co-founded Software Engineering Technology Inc., a company that performed research, training, and technology transfer for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and with other agencies of the US Department of Defense, as well as numerous private companies. The company was acquired by Ericsson in 1998.
He earned a doctorate in information and computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1970.
Poore is survived by his mother, Terresita Poore, of Campbellsville, Kentucky; daughter Pamela Poore Brannon and son-in-law Joe Brannon of Tallahassee, Florida.; son David Poore and partner Eva Vermeulen of Amsterdam, Netherlands; grandchildren Lauren Breza of Knoxville; Maggie Breza and David Breza of Tallahassee; brother Dennis Poore and sister-in-law Debbie Poore of Sarasota, Florida; and sister Judy Poore of Campbellsville, Kentucky.