Before last August, Jianxia “Jane” Xue, Feng Wang and Byunghyun Jang knew of each other only by name. Since then, the three newest additions to the University of Mississippi Department of Computer and Information Science faculty have found common ground both professionally and personally.
All three assistant professors joined the department because of its reputation and opportunity for career advancement.
“I believe that the CIS department at Ole Miss has great potential for growth, and my expertise in high-performance heterogeneous systems can have synergistic effect through collaboration with the faculty and students in the department and across the university,” Jang said. “My grand vision is to make the department and the School of Engineering a leading center for ‘exascale computing’ and to make the classroom full of excitement and motivation through practical teaching and research.”
Feng Wang
Exascale computing refers to a computer system capable of reaching performance of at least one exaflop. Such capacity would represent a thousandfold increase over the existing petascale (one exaflop is a thousand petaflops).
Being at the state’s largest university, the CIS department has a wide selection of hardware and software resources for both teaching and research, Wang said. Both aspects appeal to him. The university’s location in one of America’s top-ranked college towns was another factor in his decision to come.
“My experience is that not only the natural environment here is attractive, but also people here are very nice and willing to help,” Wang said. “I moved to the university from Canada just a little bit before the new semester began, which gave me very limited time for settling down. With the help from all the people around me, I succeeded in such a short period.”
Xue was an instructor and adjunct assistant professor for four years before being promoted to her new position.
“I do miss the research activities that I used to have prior to coming to Ole Miss, and stepping up to the current position is something that I was hoping for since the beginning,” Xue said. “The new position definitely opens doors for more research activities. I am excited about all the changes.”
Wang’s goals are to be a good professor, researcher and colleague.
“I hope through my teaching and mentoring, I can fully explore the students’ potentials and help them succeed in their futures,” he said. “As a researcher, I hope I can conduct high-impact research, contributing my intelligence and efforts to the advancement of present-day computer science and technology. Through my services and efforts, I can also help other faculty members achieve their own successes.”
Jang has led efforts on several important projects in prominent companies in his field, such as AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and Samsung. During his doctoral study, he won an AMD/ATI Ph.D. fellowship, which is awarded to only four doctoral students worldwide annually after rigorous project proposal review.
Byunghyun Jang
“I hope that by working with me, my students can have a deep understanding of current computer science and technology fields,” Jang said. “With good skills, hard work and by contributing to this field, they can succeed as engineers, researchers, professors and so forth.”
Wang’s research covers a broad spectrum in the computer networking field, and currently he is exploring various issues in wireless sensor/mesh networks, cyber-physical systems, peer-to-peer networks, social network-based content sharing and cloud computing. His work has been recognized by both the research community and industry, with several of his solutions integrated into real systems/IT products and hundreds of citations of his research publications.
“I am proud of these because they make me feel that I am doing useful things and contributing my own efforts on advancing state-of-the-art computer science and technology,” he said.
Xue’s goal is rebooting her research engine, exploring new algorithms and establishing computing systems that enable people without any computing background to be more interactively engaged in using computing to enhance their performance in physical or mind challenges.
“For example, a digital yoga trainer that sees and listens to your yoga practice and provides real-time audio and visual feedbacks to enhance your performance,” she said. “Or a smart metronome that listens to your piano practice, compares your performance to the score, taking into account all the dynamics and providing real-time audio and visual feedbacks if your tempo needs improvements. Such systems involve research on computer vision, audio processing, pattern recognition and computer graphics, which fits into my background.”
Around that goal, Xue hopes to attract more student research activities in the related field.
“I’m also hoping that the problems can inspire more creative ideas in real applications that help people challenging themselves in physical or mind practices with free and automated professional supervisions,” she said.
Xue holds a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She earned her master’s degree and doctorate at UCLA.
Jang earned his bachelor’s degree from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. He earned his master’s degree at Oklahoma State University and his doctorate from Northeastern University.
Wang received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University. He earned his doctorate from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
For more about UM’s Department of Computer and Information Science, go to http://www.cs.olemiss.edu/ or call 662-915-7396.
