Professor James David Foley

A Professor, and the Stephen Fleming Chair in Telecommunications in the School of Interactive Computing, and former Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) from 2008-2010, he is perhaps best known as the co-author of several widely-used textbooks in the field of computer graphics, of which over 400,000 copies are in print and translated in ten languages. He presently conducts research with instructional technologies and distance education. Born in Pennsylvania, he attended Lehigh University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1964. He was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society during this time. He received his Ph.D. in computer, information, and control engineering from the University of Michigan in 1969. After completing his graduate studies, he was first employed by the University of North Carolina. In 1977, he accepted a faculty position at George Washington University, where he became chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 1991 and shortly thereafter he founded the GVU Center, which in 1996 was ranked first by U.S. News & World Report for graduate computer science work in graphics and user interaction. That same year, he was appointed director of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also served as editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics from 1991 to 1995. In 1997, he was recognized by ACM SIGGRAPH with the prestigious Steven A. Coons Award. The receipt of this biannual award places him among the company of computer graphics pioneers such as Jim Blinn, Edwin Catmull and Ivan Sutherland. He accepted the position of chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Center America (MEITCA) in 1998, directing corporate R&D at four labs in North America. He returned to Georgia as Executive Director and then CEO of Yamacraw, Georgia's economic development initiative in the design of broadband systems, devices and chips. He became chairman of the Computing Research Association (CRA) in 2001. He stepped down from this position in 2003 but remains on the CRA's board of directors. He served as interim dean of Georgia Tech College of Computing from July 2008 to July 2010. The Foley Scholars Endowment was established in his honor as part of the GVU Center's 15th anniversary celebration. The endowment funds two $5,000 scholarships awarded annually to GVU-affiliated students who demonstrate "overall brilliance and potential impact." The first two Foley Scholars were named in 2008.