ENGINEERING

ARLINGTON, VA -- The National Science Foundation has named veteran computer scientist and administrator Peter A. Freeman as the foundation's new assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). Dr. Freeman, currently John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, will take office in May. Since 1990, Dr. Freeman has served Georgia Tech as a professor and founding dean of the College of Computing. From 1992 to 1995, he also acted as the university's Chief Information Officer. He is a recognized leader in encouraging the use of computer graphics for visualization and education and in making data accessible to a wide audience. He has served on numerous national panels and advisory committees, is a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association since 1988. Dr. Freeman chaired the Sam Nunn NationsBank Policy Forum on information security in 1998. This forum led to the creation of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, one of the first comprehensive centers in the United States concentrating on information security. Dr. Freeman earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University. He is the author or coauthor of three books, editor of four, and author of dozens of research papers. He held previous faculty positions at George Mason University, the University of California at Irvine and Carnegie-Mellon University. From 1987 to 1989 he served as Division Director of NSF's Computer and Computation Research division within CISE, where he helped formulate the federal government's High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative.