New Team of Associate Deans Ready to Advance College Initiatives

The College of Computing has appointed a new slate of associate deans. They assumed office this month and will assist Dean Vivek Sarkar in managing specific aspects of college life.

“I am excited to see what we will accomplish as a team with these new leaders on board,” said Sarkar. “I am also deeply thankful to our five chairs and our chief of staff, Tonya Peoples, for vetting all of the candidates and advising me on these appointments.”

The associate deans for the College of Computing are:

• Srinivas Aluru, Senior Associate Dean
• Elizabeth Cherry, Associate Dean for Graduate Education
• Tom Conte, Associate Dean for Research
• Beki Grinter, Associate Dean for Faculty Development
• David Joyner, Associate Dean for Off-Campus & Special Initiatives
• Olufisayo Omojokun, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
• Dana Randall, Associate Dean for Access and Advancement

Senior Associate Dean: Srinivas Aluru (School of Computational Science and Engineering)

Srinivas Aluru is a Regents' Professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) and has served as the executive director of the Institute of Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS). He co-leads the NSF South Big Data Regional Innovation Hub, which nurtures big data partnerships between organizations in the 16 Southern States and Washington D.C., and the NSF Transdisciplinary Research Institute for Advancing Data Science.

Aluru is a Fellow of AAAS, ACM, IEEE, and SIAM. In the College of Computing, he has received the senior faculty research and senior faculty leadership awards and the Dean’s award. He also received the Institute’s Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development award. This year, he is slated to receive the IEEE CS Charles Babbage Award in recognition of his significant contributions in the field of parallel computing.

“I have been serving Georgia Tech on the research side for nearly a decade and have been looking for the right opportunity to serve the College,” Aluru said. “With a new dean at the helm, there is new vision and energy to take our College to greater heights, and I wanted to be a part of the journey. I am grateful to have the opportunity.”

Associate Dean for Graduate Education: Elizabeth Cherry (CSE)

Cherry is the director of the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in CSE and chairs the Institute’s Graduate Curriculum Committee. She has also served as the chair of the College’s Awards Committee and as an associate chair in CSE .

She is a member of the editorial board of Chaos and a review editor for Frontiers in Physiology. She serves as co-chair of the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering. She has co-chaired the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems and co-organized Dynamics Days 2022. She served three terms on the program coordination committee of the Computing in Cardiology Conference and once for the Conference on Complex Systems in Healthcare.

“My previous service as an associate chair and director of an interdisciplinary graduate program led me to apply for this position,” Cherry said. “My goal is to find ways to better serve our students through new opportunities, policies, and programs as well as through improvements in efficiency. I aim to improve graduate education in the College and the experiences of our graduate students.”

Associate Dean for Research: Tom Conte (School of Computer Science)

Conte is one of two associate deans who are continuing in office. He has been the Associate Dean for Research since 2021 and has worked in the College of Computing for over 16 years.

He has considerable experience managing research enterprises. He was the founding director of the College’s Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies (CRNCH). Conte is a fellow of the IEEE and was the 2015 president of the IEEE. Computer Society and. In 2012, he co-founded the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative, a global project that seeks to re-think computing holistically.

“I’m grateful to have this opportunity to help our faculty succeed in their research endeavors,” Conte said. “And I’m happy to have this opportunity to give back to the Institute, which has offered me so many opportunities in my career.”

Associate Dean for Faculty Development: Beki Grinter (School of Interactive Computing)

Grinter also continues in office. She has taught at the College of Computing since 2004 and has been an associate dean since 2017.

She served as the Papers Chair (2006) and Best Papers Chair (2010) for the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), the premier conference on human-computer interaction. In 2013, she was elected to the CHI Academy.

“I was motivated to reapply for this position because promotions matter for all faculty,” Grinter said. “I want to ensure that all categories of faculty get the promotion processes they deserve and that the College of Computing is seen as providing fair and comprehensive processes.

"I also want to support all those who work so hard to deliver those processes for the faculty: their colleagues, school and College staff, and school and College leadership. I am excited and honored to be able to help everyone working on promotion and going through promotion.”

Associate Dean for Off-Campus & Special Initiatives: David Joyner (College of Computing)

David Joyner serves as executive director of Online Education & OMSCS for the College. His research focuses on online education and learning at scale, especially as they intersect with for-credit offerings at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Joyner has received several awards for his work in teaching online, including the 2019 USG Regents' Teaching Excellence Award for Online Teaching, the 2018 Georgia Tech Center for Teaching & Learning Curriculum Innovation Award, and the 2016 Georgia Tech College of Computing Lockheed Excellence in Teaching Award.

“Some of the most exciting developments we've had over the past several years have been online experiences,” Joyner said. “Those have let us rapidly expand to new audiences, like dual enrollment classes for high school students or more MSCS options for our study abroad programs and international campuses.

"Through this role, I hope we can leverage our online presence to make the entire world our campus.”

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education: Olufisayo Omojokun (School of Computing Instruction)

Omojokun comes to the job from his work as the inaugural chair of the School of Computing Instruction, which was launched in 2022. He has taught a wide range of courses in the College (and helped develop several) since 2009.

For his teaching, he has received the Institute's Co-Curricular Innovation Award (2022), the College's William D. "Bill" Leahy Jr. Outstanding Instructor Award (2021), and the Institute's Curriculum Innovation Award (2019). Fisayo was also named a Jim Pope CREATE-X Faculty Fellow (2020).

 “I am honored to be selected,” Omojokun said, “and I look forward to leveraging my existing relationships and forging new ones within the College and institute at large to elevate our undergraduate computing programs further.”

Associate Dean for Access and Advancement: Dana Randall (SCS)

Dana Randall was the ADVANCE professor for computing and is jointly appointed to the School of Mathematics. She won the College of Computing’s Outstanding Senior Faculty Research Award and the William “gus” Baird Teaching Award.

She is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and a National Associate of the National Academies, as well as a former Sloan fellow and NSF CAREER award recipient. Randall has been the Program Chair for the SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms in 2011 and the SIAM Conference on Discrete Mathematics in 2016. She was the founding executive co-director of the Institute for Data Engineering and Science and served as director of the Algorithms and Randomness Center at Georgia Tech. 

“This newly renamed position (formerly Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence) affirms the College’s commitment to seeing all community members flourish,” Randall said. “I’m excited to work with the leadership team to strengthen the College and support the advancement of faculty, staff, and students."

Photo: (left to right) David Joyner, Elizabeth Cherry, Tom Conte, Vivek Sarkar, Olufisayo Omojokun, Srinivas Aluru, Dana Randall, and Beki Grinter. Photo by College of Computing