June 10, 2008 — Ellis Horowitz, professor of computer science and electrical engineering and a past chair of the Viterbi School Computer Science Department, has been named interim chair of the department for a one-year period, beginning July 1.
“I am very pleased to announce this appointment,” said Viterbi School Dean Yannis C. Yortsos. “As you know, we are in the process of recruiting a chair of computer science and Ellis has graciously agreed to serve in an interim capacity.”
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Ellis Horowitz
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Horowitz succeeds Ramesh Govindan, professor of computer science, who had served as interim chair since July 2007.
Horowitz’s primary field of specialization is computer software. He has worked with a wide range of programming languages and software systems created from these languages. His specific area of research is software engineering, which involves the design and development of large-scale software systems. Recently, Horowitz has been involved in the Internet/World Wide Web, developing software systems that use the Internet to deliver its results. In addition to his experience as a professor, technical manager, implementer and entrepreneur, Horowitz has handled a number of technical legal matters over the past few years.
He served as chair of the Viterbi School Computer Science Department from 1990 to 1999. After stepping down, he was appointed director of the Viterbi School’s Information Technology and Distance Education program. Part of his responsibilities included the Distance Education Network (DEN), during which time he introduced webcasting of courses.
He received his B.S. degree from Brooklyn College and his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin. Prior to USC, he was on the faculty at University of Wisconsin and at Cornell University before joining USC. He has also been a visiting professor at MIT and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion).
Professor Horowitz is the author of 10 books and numerous journal articles and conference proceedings on computer science subjects ranging from data structures, algorithms and software design to computer science education. He is also a past associate editor for the journals
Communications of the ACM and
Transactions on Mathematical Software.
