Title: Vision for a Top Tier Academic Program
Abstract: The landscape of Electrical and Computer Engineering programs in the US has become extremely competitive. In addition, the shifts in student enrollment trends and federal funding priorities in recent years require a renewed focus on modernizing EE and CpE curricula, increasing diversity, and enhancing multidisciplinary research. In this talk, I will present my vision in regards to essential ingredients required to maintain and further strengthen a competitive ECpE department at ISU. I will also present my leadership experiences that relate to this vision, and share my administrative philosophy.
Biography: Ashfaq A. Khokhar received his Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Southern California, in 1993. After his Ph.D., he spent two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. In 1995, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware, where he first served as Assistant Professor and then as Associate Professor. In Fall 2000, Dr. Khokhar joined UIC in the Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he served as Professor and Director Graduate Studies, till 2013. In Fall of 2010, Dr. Khokhar has also founded a successful startup company, Video Analytica, Inc. that is developing smart video camera technologies to recognize events of interest in realtime. In 2013 Dr. Khokhar joined the Department of ECE at IIT, where he currently serves as Professor and Chair. He also serves on the advisory boards of leading industry organization and venture capital funds.
Dr. Khokhar has published over 265 technical papers and book chapters in refereed conferences and journals in the areas of wireless networks, multimedia systems, data mining, and high performance computing. His research work has attracted over $11 million of federal, state and industry funds. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 1998. His research work has received numerous best paper awards, including the most recent Best Short Paper award in MSWiM 2013 for his work entitled “Voronoi Trees for Hierarchical In-Network Data and Space Abstractions in Wireless Sensor Networks. He has served as Program Chair of multiple conferences, including: BiCoB 2012, Globecom 2009, PDCS 2004, ICPP 2004, and also serves on the editorial boards of multiple journals. He is a Fellow of IEEE for his contributions to multimedia computing and databases.