Achieving Privacy in an Increasingly Connected World

Please join Prof. Alec Gallimore, Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering; Prof. Brian Noble, Chair of Computer Science and Engineering; Former U-M Vice President for Research and Professor of Mechanical Engineering S. Jack Hu; and the Computer Science and Engineering Division as we honor Prof. Todd Austin for his appointment to a collegiate professorship.

Professor Austin will be installed at the S. Jack Hu Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and will present a lecture.

Biography – Todd Austin

Prof. Todd Austin is a recognized leader in the area of computer architecture research, having delivered several seminal papers that have changed the landscape of research in the field. From 2013 – 2018, he was the director of the $28M Center for Future Architectures Research (C-FAR).

In a current project, Prof. Austin is leading an effort to design an “unhackable” computer that is inspired by the human immune system, under which information is rapidly and randomly moved and destroyed. The technology prevents attackers from accessing the critical information they need to construct a successful attack.

Prof. Austin has previously led projects and collaborated on others to advance memory and processor architectures, helping to advance energy efficiency and to enable probabilistic computing. In earlier work, he released SimpleScalar, one of the first execution-driven architectural simulators, and his paper describing it has been cited over 4000 times. The simulator contributed to a revolution of quantitative computer architecture research where performance analysis became a required ingredient of every published paper.

Prof. Austin has made numerous contributions of time, effort, and equipment in support of the ECE program at Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT) in Ethiopia, which has included curriculum development and classroom teaching, and formalization of an exchange program between U-M and AAiT.

He has twice received the Richard Newton Gigascale Systems Research Center Industrial Impact Award and is a recipient of the ACM/SIGARCH Maurice Wilkes Award, the U-M Henry Russel Award, and a number of research and teaching awards from the College of Engineering. Early in his career, he received an NSF CAREER Award and was selected as a Sloan Fellow. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

Biography — S. Jack Hu

Dr. S. Jack Hu had a long, distinguished career at the University of Michigan. He began as a graduate student in January 1985 and received his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Mechanical Engineering in 1986 and 1990. After four years as a research faculty member, he joined the ME faculty as an assistant professor in 1995. He was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, a Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering, and the J. Reid and Polly Anderson Professor of Manufacturing. Hu has authored or co-authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed journal articles related to manufacturing systems, assembly, and engineering statistics. He holds six patents and worked with several industry partners to enhance manufacturing quality and productivity.

Hu served in various leadership roles at Michigan, including as Executive Director of Interdisciplinary and Professional Engineering (now ISD), Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering, and was UM Vice President for Research from 2014 to 2019.

Hu is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP). He is the recipient of the ASME William T. Ennor Manufacturing Technology Award, the SME Gold Medal, and several best paper awards.

Hu joined the University of Georgia (UGA) as the UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor of Engineering and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost on July 1, 2019. As provost, he serves as the chief academic officer and oversees instruction, research, faculty affairs, public service and outreach, and information technology.