Professor Amar Mukherjee

A renowned computer scientist from India with over 30 years of teaching experience in Computer Science and Computer Engineering, he was internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions to Switching Theory, Hardware Algorithms for Non-numeric Computation, VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) Design and Application-specific VLSI Algorithms and Architectures. His early work on cellular logic, sorting networks and hardware algorithms for string matching laid foundations to the current developments of systolic machines. He received his D.Phil.(Sc.) degree from the University of Calcutta, Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics in 1962. He was a Professor of Computer Science in the Harris Engineering Center at the University of Central Florida School of Engineering & Computer Science from 1979 until his retirement in 2010. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at the University of Iowa from1969 to 1979; at Montana State University from 1967to 1968; and at Princeton University from 1963 to 1964. He also held visiting faculty positions at the University of Texas at Austin (1974), Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland (1989), Stanford Research Institute (summer 1968), the IBM Research Center (summer, 1985), the AT&T Research Laboratory (summer 1987) and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (1965-67). In addition, he held visiting faculty positions at several institutions in India (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta University, 1989), (St. Johns University, Newfoundland, Canada (1982), Hiroshima University, Japan (1982), L.A.A.S., Toulouse, France (summer 1974), English Electric Leo Marconi Computers Ltd., England (1965) and Hsinchu University, Taiwan (1982). He was the first to develop an algorithm for the minimization of EXOR-AND-type logic networks; he also formulated useful properties of switching functions with respect to completeness, symmetry and decomposability. He developed a theory of cellular logic and applied this to the design of efficient unate cellular arrays for arbitray switching functions. He discovered an odd-even permutation sorting algorithm in 1972 and developed a new real-time VLSI sorting algorithm, called weavesort in 1980. He pioneered the field of hardware algorithms for non-numeric computation and developed some of the earliest (circa 1978) systolic algorithms for string matching and complex pattern matching operations, regular expression recognition and string similarity search (circa 1989). He developed hardware algorithms for data compression for which he holds two U.S. patents (one pending), and designed special-purpose VLSI chips for real-time data compression/decompression, text search and volume visualization. He was the author or co-author of over 60 research contributions to scholarly publications and technical conferences, publishing original papers on problems on Graph Theory, Scheduling and CAD tools for VLSI circuits. He also wrote Introduction to nMOS and CMOS VLSI Systems Design (Prentice Hall, 1986) which is used throughout the world as a text for VLSI design courses. He also co-authored and edited Recent Developments in Switching Theory (Academic Press, 1971) which is a classic collection of fundamental works on Switching Theory by leading researchers and was widely adopted as a text in graduate courses. He secured and participated in more than two million dollars of research grants and has graduated 14 Ph.D.?s, including the first Ph.D. in Computer Science in the state of Florida. He received IEEE Computer Society's Meritorious Service Award for serving as Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computers for three terms (1973-76, 1982-86, 1992-94) and for Chairing the IEEE Technical Committee on VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration - the technology of microchips) (1984-86). He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions for VLSI Systems (published by the Computer Society, Circuits and Systems Society and the Solid State Council). He served as a member of the Steering Committee of IEEE Transactions for VLSI Systems during 1992-94 and also served as a Steering Committee member for the Annual IEEE Workshop on VLSI. He was invited to serve in Program Committees and to serve as a session chair in many international Conferences, Symposia and Workshops. He also served as the Chairman of the Computer Science Department of the University of Central Florida during 1984-88. He has served on several NSF panels and was invited to participate in a Workshop on New Paradigms for Manufacturing conducted by the MIPS Division (CISE) of NSF May 2-4, 1994. He later joined NSF as a Visiting Scientist for the summer of 1994 to edit the Proceedings of this Workshop. He participated in the preparation of the Executive Summary and the Group II report (Dealing with VLSI-like technologies SFF (Solid Freeform Fabrication) and MEMS (Micro-electromechanical Systems technologies). He was again invited the summer of 1995 by NSF to participate in the SFF Workshop held at Carnegie Mellon University (June 4-6, 1995). He was also invited to attend the NSF sponsored Workshop on Design Methodology for MEMS at Caltech, November 12-15, 1995. He received the 2005 IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award, "For contributions to lossless compression algorithms and compressed domain search-aware pattern matching algorithms for retrieval of text and images?. He was a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to lecture and perform research in Computer Science during 1989 in India. He was also awarded a TOKTEN grant by United Nations Development program sponsored by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of Government of India, New Delhi (1989). He was a Member of the Quill society at the University of Central Florida, a society of authors of text books and major works of arts and sciences. He received several research grants and received the meritorious service award of the IEEE for innovative leadership in increasing the vitality of the VLSI Technical Committee.