Abdol-Hossein Esfahanian has been named chairperson of the Michigan State University Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) - the largest academic department in the College of Engineering and one of the largest at MSU.
Esfahanian is an award-winning CSE professor, who has twice won the college's Withrow Teaching Award and also received the Withrow Exceptional Service Award.
"It is my pleasure to announce that Dr. Esfahanian has accepted the appointment as chairperson of the CSE department after having served as interim chair since 2018," said Engineering Dean Leo Kempel. "He has provided exceptional service to his department, college and MSU."
MSU's CSE department has almost 1,600 students and is home to the College of Engineering's newest major - a bachelor of science degree in computational data science. The new degree program, which began in fall 2019, helps students build skills in fundamental computing and software development, and the design and implementation of systems that solve complex problems.
Esfahanian said there is a growing interest in computer science among majors and non-majors at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
"Connected, computational devices are now part of every aspect of modern life," he explained. "Computational thinking and programming have joined mathematics, reading, and writing as essential skills for students, regardless of major."
"Our students and graduates are in high demand by both companies and elite graduate programs. And our faculty are noted for their research on artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, internet of things, digital organisms, telemedicine, and computational approaches to law enforcement, biometrics, and security," he added.
Esfahanian joined MSU in 1983 and has served in various leadership roles in the CSE department, including graduate director and associate chairperson.
He has published more than 120 research papers on applied graph theory, computer communications, fault-tolerant computing, information technology, and data mining. He has graduated 13 PhD students so far. His software package for graph manipulation has been used by many researchers.
Esfahanian received bachelor's (1975) and master's (1977) degrees from the University of Michigan, and a PhD degree from Northwestern University (1983).
He follows chair designee and MSU Foundation Professor Yunhao Liu, who has decided to focus his attention on teaching and building research programs around the Internet-of-Things.