The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Engineering announced today that Prof. Wen-mei Hwu will serve as acting head of its top-ranked Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His appointment will begin immediately.
Hwu is currently the AMD Jerry Sanders Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He leads the IBM-Illinois Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research (C3SR) and is a PI on the Blue Waters supercomputing project. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
“Wen-mei is the epitome of an Illinois Engineering faculty member—gracious, collaborative, innovative, and incisive. I am certain he will serve ECE extremely well,” said Tamer Basar, interim dean of the College of Engineering.
Hwu will be acting department head while Prof. Bill Sanders serves as interim director of the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), a new world-class innovation center led by the University of Illinois System. Earlier this year, the state approved $500 million in capital funding to develop DPI, an innovation center that will be home to leading-edge research, and the Illinois Innovation Network, a virtually connected network of regional hubs that will spread the institute’s impact across the state.