Three Virginia Tech engineering professors , Barbara Ryder of computer science (CS), and Maury Nussbaum and Kostis Triantis, faculy members in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE), received endowed professorships at the August meeting of Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors.
Ryder, the newly appointed head of the CS Department was named the J. Byron Maupin Professor. The Maupin Professorship was established by his widow Majorie S. Maupin and her brother, LeRoy M. Sizemore, in 1993. Maupin, a native of Bedford, Va., was a 1934 industrial engineering graduate who spent his career with DuPont and Sprague Meter Company.
Ryder is the first woman to serve as a department head in the history of the nationally ranked College of Engineering. She received her Ph.D. degree in CS at Rutgers in 1982. She previously worked in the 1970s at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. Ryder’s research focuses on static and dynamic program analyses to improve the software quality of industrial-strength object-oriented systems, for use in practical software tools.
Ryder became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the premier CS professional society, in 1998. She was selected as a Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women’s Distinguished Professor in 2004 and received the association’s Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) Distinguished Service Award in 2001. At Rutgers, she was voted Professor of the Year for Excellence in Teaching by the CS Graduate Student Society in 2003, received a Leader in Diversity Award in 2006, and a Graduate Teaching Award from the graduate school in 2007.
Ryder has been an active leader in the ACM (council member 2000-2008; chair, Federated Computing Research Conference 2003; and chair, ACM SIGPLAN 1995-1997). She has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Computer Research Association (1998-2001). She is an editorial board member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Transactions on Software Engineering, and Software, Practice and Experience.
She received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s degree from Stanford University.
Nussbaum was named the Hal G. Prillaman Professor Fellow of Engineering and Operations Research. Nussbaum will hold this professor fellowship for two years. The professorship fellowship is a new appointment designed by the college that allows it to use the endowment to recognize faculty who are producing exceptional results in all aspects of their work.
Nussbaum began his career at Virginia Tech as an assistant professor in 1996. He has developed and taught ISE courses to hundreds of students, and has established a research program in occupational biomechanics, the modeling of lumbar spine kinetics and kinematics, artificial neural networks, and industrial ergonomics and work physiology.
He has advised more than 35 graduate students, authored or co-authored more than 100 peer reviewed papers and has participated in more than $10 million in sponsored research projects. Triantis of Arlington, Va., who resides at Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region facility, was named the Ralph H. Bogle ISE Professor Fellow. Triantis will also hold this professor fellowship for two years.
Triantis began his career at Virginia Tech in 1983 as an assistant professor. He has also developed and taught ISE courses to hundreds of students. He has established a research program in the design of performance measurement systems for service and production organizations, the use of fuzzy sets as a mechanism to represent uncertainty, and the use of continuous dynamic efficiency performance in performance measurement modeling.
He has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer reviewed papers and has participated in more than $4.5 million in sponsored research projects.
Triantis received his bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.