The election of two faculty members from the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Prof. Tei-wei Kuo and Prof. Chih-jen Lin, as 2011 IEEE Fellows in December has lifted the total number of the college’s IEEE Fellows to 31. The college boasts the highest number of IEEE Fellows in Taiwan, and it is proud of the international recognition its professors continue to garner for their world class scholarship.

Prof. Kuo, who was cited by IEEE for his “contributions to real-time embedded systems and flash memory storage systems,” is a distinguished professor in the college’s Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering and Graduate Institute of Networking and Multimedia. Kuo has made significant contributions to basic theoretical research and technological innovation in the study of real-time embedded systems and memory storage systems.

In the area of basic theoretical research, his greatest academic achievement has been the development of analytical methods for the assessment of the real-time performance of program schedulers. Prof. Kuo’s concepts continue to guide academic research in schedulability analysis. The theories he developed for energy efficient resource scheduling proved to be a breakthrough over previous empirical methods and established an important foundation for scheduling theories at the lower limits of theoretical values.

Kuo is renowned for his research and development work and applications in the field of systems technology. Many years ago, he and the research team he leads already predicted the development of flash memory storage systems. The memory address projection approaches, index processing, files systems and reliability technology proposed by Prof. Kuo have had a profound impact on subsequent systems applications and technology research and development. His work is also among the few systems operation technologies that are recommended by the authorities of the open-source file software YAFFS (Yet Another Flash File System).

In recent years, Kuo’s team has demonstrated its prowess in the area of embedded operating system and development tools. The team is working closely with industry as well and looks forward to creating technological breakthroughs and leadership opportunities for the private sector. Prof. Kuo’s election to IEEE Fellow is an affirmation of the academic and practical contributions he has made in the fields of real-time embedded systems and flash memory storage systems.

Prof. Lin has been recognized as an IEEE Fellow for his “contributions to support vector machine algorithms and software.” He has made major advances in the research of machine learning while working in NTU’s Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Graduate Institute of Networking and Multimedia and Institute of Industrial Engineering.

The machine learning software LIBSVM (Library for Support Vector Machines) developed by Lin’s research team is widely used in both the academic and industrial communities and has been downloaded around the world hundreds of thousands of times. LIBSVM has been cited in more than 6,000 research papers according to the statistics of Google Scholar in December 2010. This figure indicates that this is very likely the most highly cited research result in the field of computer science in Taiwan. Prof. Lin stepped into the world of machine learning research only after having returned to Taiwan following his overseas studies, and it is here at NTU that he has produced these internationally recognized achievements.

IEEE elects members as IEEE Fellows each year and limits the number of new fellows each year to the one thousandth of its total membership. Though candidates are subjected to a stringent selection process and competition is intense, the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science has witnessed its faculty members being named IEEE Fellows each year without fail for the last twelve years. The college is proud that this record stands up to those of the world’s finest universities.