Thomas Sjöland

Head of division SCS - Software and Computer Systems, in the department of Computer Science, CS  in the EECS school of KTH.

Director of studies for the courses for the 1st and 2nd cycle provided by the division SCS.

Lecturer in Computer Science.

There are two kinds of people (at least) in our academic world:

- One type, the hunter type, likes challenges that they can successfully complete and then move on to new adventures.

- Another kind, the gardener, likes to study different processes and problems, manage them, and like to improve the management around them, maybe with the help of software, or simply just by reorganizing. Collecting trophies is not that important.

I must admit that I am of the second kind. That's how I ended up being director of studies and head of department for about twenty-five years now. In previous periods I was project manager, researcher and also consultant. For a few years in the 70s, I studied medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and Lund University, and I have a bachelor's degree in computer science, mathematics and logic (theoretical philosophy) from Stockholm University.

I have also done a lot with experimental music, e.g. computer music at EMS, and improvisational music in various constellations.

I like lecturing and discussing with students, especially about programming. Logic programming and formal mathematical semantics for programming languages ​​have been themes I worked on in various courses.

An unfinished thesis theme has been the abstract interpretation of parallel logic programs in order to find errors and inefficiencies at the time of compilation rather than by test execution.

This autumn, the KTH projects will be finished through the care of the calendar and I will move on to other pleasures as a pensioner. For example. there is a large number of books on my table waiting to be read.