MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Professor Nancy A. Lynch appointed to Cecil H. Green Professorship

August 2, 1994

From: Paul Penfield, Jr.

Date: August 2, 1994

Subject: Chairs

I am pleased to report two appointments of EECS faculty members to professorships. Nancy Lynch has been appointed to the Cecil H. Green Professorship, and Mitchell Trott to the KDD Career Development Chair.

Nancy is an expert in the theory of distributed computing. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT in 1972. Then, after serving on the faculty at Tufts, USC, Florida International University, and Georgia Tech, she returned to MIT in 1982.

Since its beginning in 1970, the Green Chair has been used by department faculty to explore new research areas. Previous chairholders have included Peter Elias, Sam Mason, Dick Adler, Al Oppenheim, Fernando Corbató, Tom Lee, Al Drake, Albert Meyer, Rick Morgenthaler, Dave Staelin, and Silvio Micali.

In reviewing the most effective use of this chair, the current department heads have decided that the chair can be used for cases where the new research is related to current research and thus represents a gradual, not a radical, change. During the past few years Nancy has been developing formal methods for distributed and real-time systems. She plans to shift her research direction so as to apply her methods to a variety of practical systems.

Mitch is an expert in communication theory, particularly algebraic coding theory, system theory, and multiple access communication. He graduated from Stanford University in 1992 and joined our faculty at that time. His current research deals with fundamental limits on wireless cellular networks.

The KDD chair was established in 1983 by the Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co., Ltd. of Tokyo, in order to promote teaching and research in communications and technology, and to further cultural and intellectual exchange between Japan and the U.S. Previous chairholders have included Dave Gifford, Dave Tennenhouse, and Qing Hu.