On July 1 I officially move jobs from Northwestern to Georgia Tech, a change not just in location but in role as I become a department chair.
I'm proud by what we put together in my 4 1/2 years at Northwestern, a strong group at the intersection of CS and Economic theory with Jason Hartline, Nicole Immorlica and great connections with the economists at Kellogg, the Northwestern business school.
So why leave? I've been thinking about taking on a more leadership role at this point in my academic career and when Georgia Tech came calling it was impossible to turn it down. But all moves are bittersweet and I'll truly miss the atmosphere we put together at Northwestern.
Also in the CS community, on July 1 I pass the mantle of SIGACT chair to Paul Beame. In exchange I'm joining the CRA board on that date.
This is a week of many conferences, ICML in Edinburgh, LICS in Croatia, Women in Theory in Princeton and the blog's namesake Computational Complexity in Porto. Having attended the first 26 meetings of the Complexity conference I miss it for the first time. Bill is there and hopefully he'll come back with a full report.
Eric Allender remains the only person to have attended every Complexity conference. "I'll continue to go as long as they are fun", he remarked last week. May he have reason to go for many more years.
Which brings me to the saddest transition of them all. Manfred Kudlek, retired professor at Hamburg, passed away on the bus for the excursion to Betchley Park last Monday during the Computability in Europe conference. Manfred is well known as the only person to have attended all 38 ICALP conferences, the Warwick meeting next month will seem empty without him.
Congrats on the new gig, hope you can keep the rambling wreck .... err .... rambling!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the remarks about Manfred. I was impressed by his broad field of interests and by his precision and his love for details. I remember that the handouts in his courses looked like printed but were handwritten. It is hard to understand that he is no longer with us. k-jl
ReplyDeleteThe first time I met Manfred he was teaching a class in Tarragona, Spain, which had students from all over Europe. On the first day, without any preparation, he went around the class and spoke to each student, saying something in their native language. When he came to me he said "Baile Átha Cliath" which was the first time I had heard anyone from outside of Ireland use the Irish language. He was a citizen of the world and a wonderful person.
ReplyDeleteyou missing the Computational Complexity conference seems like a big thing to happen
ReplyDeletehope things are alright at home
Interesting, ICML was mentioned but not COLT (albeit co-located)?
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