Adam Kolawa

Adam Kazimierz Kolawa (June 25, 1957 – April 26, 2011) was CEO and co-founder of Parasoft, a software company in Monrovia, California, that makes software development tools.

History

Kolawa received a M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the AGH University of Science and Technology in 1981 and a M.Sc. in physics from Jagiellonian University in 1982. After Kolawa emigrated from Poland to the United States, he earned a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the California Institute of Technology. While at Caltech, he worked with Geoffrey Fox and helped design and implement the Intel hypercube parallel computer known as the Cosmic Cube.

In 1987, he founded Parasoft with four friends from Caltech. Kolawa co-authored two books on development testing and software testing. In 2001, Kolawa was awarded the Los Angeles Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Software category.

Kolawa was granted 20 patents for software technologies he has invented. His patents include runtime memory error detection technology (Patent and – granted in 1998), statically analyzing source code quality using rules (Patent – granted in 1999), and automated unit test case generation technology (Patent and – granted in 1998).

Kolawa died suddenly on April 26, 2011.

Publications

Books