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Rare honor
AAAS recognizes computer science with election of Carl Chang as
a fellow.
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The rolls of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) are filled with chemists, biologists and engineers who have been
awarded fellowship status by that organization.
Computer scientists - now that's a much rarer accomplishment.
It's also an accomplishment recently achieved by Carl Chang, professor
and chair of the Department of Computer Science.
"This is really an honor for people working in the physical and biological
sciences," Chang said. "But I'm very grateful as a computer
scientist to receive this recognition from the science community."
Chang will be officially recognized during the 2005 AAAS annual meeting
in February in Washington, D.C. He was one of three Iowa State faculty
members honored along with Catherine Woteki, dean of the College of Agriculture,
and Nenad Kostic, professor of chemistry.
Their selection was based upon their efforts to advance science or applications
that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. The AAAS is
the world's largest federation of scientists.
Chang was specifically honored for excellence in computer science and
software engineering research, for his distinguished contributions to
the development of modern computer science curricula, and for exemplifying
leadership in serving professional societies in the world of computing.
For Chang those three areas are interrelated.
Long active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Computer Society, Chang recently completed a one-year term as president
of the oldest and largest (100,000 members) professional association of
people in computing.
He has held several other offices in the organization, including his current
position as past president. For four years, Chang led a Computer Society
joint task force charged with the development of new computing curricula
at the undergraduate level. In 2001 that task force established a new
model computer science curriculum (CC2001) replacing a ten-year-old recommended
curriculum.
"This has had a major impact world-wide," Chang said. "We've
offered two workshops in (the People's Republic of) China to explain the
principles. More than a thousand universities in China will embrace CC2001
during their computing curriculum renovation process."
Interest in the new curriculum has also sprung up throughout the world
including Europe, Japan and Russia.
Chang says it was necessary to update the curriculum because the field
is continually evolving.
"Computer science is such a young field," he said. "The
Internet by itself has had a major impact not only in terms of technology
but in research and information gathering and dissemination."
The Internet isn't the only area where computer science has grown by leaps
and bounds. Bioinformatics has become vitally important to computer scientists.
The technology
incorporated by multimedia computing, wireless networks and software is
changing so rapidly that Chang doesn't think the Computer Society can
wait another decade before updating the curriculum recommendations again.
An incremental update model will be applied to such curriculum update
efforts.
Chang's research in software engineering emphasizes providing solutions
to the analysis, design and project management of developing large-scale
software systems. His research in net-centric computing focuses on agent-based
collaboration framework for software engineering applications.
Chang is also an IEEE fellow and a member of the European Academy of Sciences.
Around LAS
January 24 to February 6, 2005
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