Professor Scott A. Smolka Appointed to SUNY Distinguished Professor Rank

 

Scott A. Smolka ​​STONY BROOK, NY, November 18, 2016 -- Professor Scott A. Smolka, a member of the Department of Computer Sciences at Stony Brook University, has been appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor, approved by the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees.  Prof. Smolka is one of five Stony Brook professors recently approved for the appointment of SUNY Distinguished Faculty Ranks, which now totals 1,070 members in the Distinguished Academy.​

​The Distinguished Professorship is conferred upon individuals who have achieved national or interna tional prominence and a distinguished reputation within their chosen field. This distinction is attained through significant contributions to research literature in the area of their expertise.  The candidate’s work must be of such character that the individual’s presence will tend to elevate the standards of scholarship of colleagues both within and beyond these persons’ academic fields.​

​Prof. Smolka joined the Department of Computer Science in 1982, and was promoted to full professor in 1995.  He has made fundamental research contributions in a number of areas, including process algebra, model checking, probabilistic processes, runtime verification, and the modeling and analysis of cardiac cells and neural circuits. He is perhaps best known for the algorithm he co-invented with Paris Kanellakis for deciding bisimulation, a fundamental notion of equivalence for concurrent processes. His research has resulted in over 190 publications, generating 7,825 citations with an h-index of 45. 

Upon hearing the news, Smolka said, “I am deeply honored to join the ranks of all the previously appointed SUNY Distinguished Professors.  I am very grateful to my students and colleagues, past and present, for their invaluable contributions, with special thanks to my PhD co-advisors Tom Doeppner and Paris Kanellakis. I would also like to thank the funding agencies that have supported my research over the years, especially the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.”

Prof. Smolka has also been principal investigator and co-principal investigator on grants totaling more than $23 million, and is the lead principal investigator on the recently awarded $8.75 million National Science Foundation (NSF) multi-institutional grant, Compositional, Approximate, and Quantitative Reasoning for Medical Cyber-Physical Systems.  This research, of which SBU will receive $4.2 million, seeks to develop a virtual-heart platform to improve and accelerate medical device development and testing. He also served as Deputy Director of a $10 million NSF multi-institutional grant on Computational Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems.  Smolka was recently recognized as a Fellow of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science, is the recipient of the President and Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the Department of Computer Science’s Research Excellence Award.

“Stony Brook University is fortunate to be home to five new SUNY Distinguished Faculty members who provide the highest levels of thought leadership and innovation in their respective fields,” said Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. “Their contributions, guidance and standards of scholarship are a valued resource to the institution and to our students,” he said. “On behalf of Stony Brook, I congratulate all five on this well-deserved honor.”

Since the program's inception in 1963, SUNY has appointed 1,070 faculty to the distinguished ranks, as follows, including these most recent appointments: 375 Distinguished Professorships; 311 Distinguished Service Professorships; 379 Distinguished Teaching Professorships; and 5 Distinguished Librarian Professorships. 

SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher said, “For each distinguished faculty member, there is a story of an individual who pushes the boundaries of what was thought possible in research, or of someone who has influenced greater thought leadership on a national or international level.”

About Stony Brook University
Part of the State University of New York system, Stony Brook University welcomed its first incoming class in 1957 and in 1969 the Department of Computer Science was formally established. The University has grown tremendously, now with more than 25,000 students and 2,500 faculty. A large number of students, over 5,000, take classes offered by the Department of Computer Science. Stony Brook’s membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU) places it among the top 62 research institutions in North America. The CS department is consistently ranked within the top 10% of graduate programs by the National Research Council and was ranked #40 in 2014 by U.S. News & World Report.