Marilyn Wolf appointed new chair of computer science and engineering

Marilyn C. Wolf has been appointed the new chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and began her new position on Sept. 1.

She succeeds Steve Goddard, who recently completed his second term as department chair, and vice chair Witawas Srisa-an, who has acted as interim chair since May.

Wolf said she plans to capitalize on assets already in place in Computer Science and Engineering, but looks forward to the potential for expanding both the number of faculty and students in the department.

“The university has provided a large number of faculty positions for the department, and because of the growth in the department and its strategic importance,” Wolf said. “Job Number One is attracting strong people to join our department.”

Wolf is also looking forward to expanding the department’s research and educational programs, which she said are poised for growth.

“I think that the department has a lot of opportunities in front of it, and figuring out how to make the most of those opportunities is going to be an exciting challenge,” said Wolf. “Computer science is still an evolving field and figuring out where the field is going and how the department should be positioned to be a leader in those fields is a wonderful puzzle.”

Wolf was previously the Rhesa “Ray” S. Farmer Distinguished Chair of Embedded Computing Systems and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Before joining Georgia Tech, she was a faculty member at Princeton University (1989-2007) and also worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984-89). Wolf earned bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and is a co-founder of Verificon Corporation, which designs smart camera systems. She has developed a number of techniques for embedded computing, and her research areas have included embedded systems, video and computer vision, and VLSI systems.

Wolf has also assisted in starting several technical conferences, including CODES and MPSoC, and has received the ASEE/CSE and HP Frederick E. Terman Award in 2003, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Education Award in 2006, and the IEEE Computer Society Harry H. Goode Memorial Award in 2019. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM as well as an IEEE Computer Society Golden Core member.