Announcement of New Head in Computer Science Department

I am pleased to inform you the appointment of Professor Lionel Ni as our 
new Head and Professor of the Department of Computer Science with effect 
from 2 July 2002.

The Search Committee for the Head of the Department of Computer Science 
recommends unanimously Professor Ni for the headship after an 
international search process. I would like to take this opportunity to 
thank members of the Search Committee for their time and dedicated effort.

Professor Ni is a renowned scientist and leader in the networking area, 
particularly in the web-based routing systems. During his appointment as 
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State 
University, he has directly supervised over 26 Ph.D. students and has 
published one book and over 170 technical articles in refereed journals 
and proceedings in the areas of parallel architectures, distributed 
processing, high-speed networks, VLSI design automation, operating 
systems, software tools, fault tolerant computing, parallel compilers, and 
benchmarking techniques.

Prof Ni was an editor of IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions 
on Prarallel and Distributed Systems, and Journal of Parallel and 
Distributed Computing. He was the program director of the US National 
Science Foundation Microeletronic Systems Architecture Program and was 
appointed as fellow of IEEE in 1994. He chaired many conferences and 
received many outstanding paper awards. He won the Michigan State 
University Distinguished Faculty Award in 1994. In 1998, his paper "The 
Turn Model for Adaptive Routing" was selected as one of the 41 most 
significant impact papers in the last 25 years in computer architecture 
area.

Please join me in extending our welcome to Professor Ni, and lend him your 
generous support as you have done so for Profs. Derick Wood and Roland 
Chin in the past. I am sure that with your support, the Department will 
move forward to attain next higer goals.

Meanwhile, I would also like to extend my special thanks to Professor 
Derick Wood for his help to the Department out as Acting Head. We owe him 
a great deal for his willingness to serve the Department in the interim 
period.

Kang L. Wang
Dean of Engineering