I recently saw this press release (in Dutch) to the effect that Boudewijn Haverkort has become the new director of the Embedded Systems Institute in Eindhoven. Congratulations to him for this appointment.
By browsing through the press release, I learned that from January 1, 2009, Ed Brinksma, the former director of ESI, is Rector Magnificus of the University of Twente. Congrats to Ed too!
Ed is the second (theoretical) computer scientist I know of who has become rector of a European university. The other is Furio Honsell, the first ever computer scientist to become rector of an Italian university.
Do you know of other (theoretical) computer scientists who are rectors of universities? And is it good for the (T)CS community that some of its members take up rectorships? I do think so, and for many reasons mostly related to academic politics, but I'd like to hear your opinion.
6 comments:
John Henessey (Architecture) is the president of Stanford. Maria Klawe (theory) is the president of Harvey Mudd. Jeff Vitter (theory) is on his way there :): he's now Provost (second in command) at Texas A&M.
Well, let us not forget Mads Tofte, who is 'Rektor' at ITU (http://www.itu.dk/~tofte/index_danish.html).
The late Martin Rem, a Ph.D. graduate of Edsgar W. Dijkstra, was the rector magnificus of TU/Eindhoven for 5 years.
You ask, is it a good thing for us (and if so, why)? I suspect it helps show we are a genuine academic discipline, and makes the university's administration less likely to confuse us with computing services.
Chris Hankin, a theorist who has written a nice book on lambda-calculus and one on program analysis was Pro Rector (Research) of Imperial College from 2004 until 2006.
Guy Cousineau is president of Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7
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