Armin Mikler Assumes Role As Chair of Department of Computer Science

ATLANTA — Armin Mikler, a specialist in computational epidemiology, will be the chair of the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University, effective September 1. Mikler comes to Georgia State University from the University of North Texas (UNT) where he served as professor and associate chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Yi Pan, who has led the department for 12 of the last 15 years, will return to a focus on research and teaching full time as a Regents’ Professor. Pan oversaw a period of tremendous growth in the department, which saw undergraduate enrollment in computer science increase nearly five-fold, while the size of the graduate program has more than doubled.

Mikler is founding director of the Center for Computational Epidemiology and Response Analysis (CeCERA), which he is relocating to Georgia State. Through CeCERA and its Computational Epidemiology Research Laboratory (CERL), he has led the development of new modeling techniques for infectious disease outbreaks and the design of computational methods to improve disaster response planning at the regional level. This research has received support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and through contracts from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and Los Angeles County Public Health Department.

Sara Rosen, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, said Mikler has articulated a strong vision to expand the department’s research productivity, develop professionally-oriented degree programs, and build strong collaborations across the university and with industry partners in Atlanta and beyond.

“Dr. Mikler also brings an exciting new research direction to campus that will complement Georgia State’s existing strengths in computational life sciences and epidemiology,” Rosen said. “The department is poised for tremendous expansion and innovation, and I look forward to working with Dr. Mikler to realize this vision for the future of computer science at Georgia State.”

“I have been looking forward to join a very successful group of faculty and staff at Georgia State’s Department of Computer Science,” Mikler said. “I am excited to be working with colleagues in the Department of Computer Science, the College of Arts & Sciences, and across Georgia State to establish multidisciplinary research collaborations.”

Mikler began his academic career at the University of Applied Science in Darmstadt, Germany before completing master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science at Iowa State University and post-doctoral research at Ames Laboratory. Mikler had been a member of the UNT faculty since 1997, and held leadership positions encompassing departmental and research center administration since 2003.