COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Dr. Valerie E. Taylor, professor and head of the Department of Computer Science, has been named holder of the Royce E. Wisenbaker Professorship I at Texas A&M University. Taylor came to Texas A&M in January 2003 from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northwestern University, where she had taught since 1991. Her research interests are in the area of high-performance computing, with particular emphasis on the performance analysis and modeling of parallel and distributed application. She has published over 80 articles in this area. Among her honors are the 2003 MOBE Influencers and Innovators of the Internet and Technology Award; the 2002 Young Outstanding Leader Award from the University of California, Berkeley, Engineering Alumni Society; the 2002 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award; 2001 Hewlett Packard Harriet B. Rigas Education Award; and the 2001 Pathbreaker Award from the Women in Leadership at Northwestern University. In 1993, Taylor received a National Science Foundation National Young Investigator Award. Taylor chaired the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference 2002 in Vancouver, Canada, and is past chair of the Coalition to Diversify Computing. She is a member of the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, the executive committee for the National Computational Science Alliance, and a member of the University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering Advisory Board. Taylor received a B.S. in computer and electrical engineering in 1985 and an M.S. in electrical engineering in 1986, both from Purdue University. She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1991.
