Professor Tamer Özsu named 2018 Cheriton Faculty Fellow

Professor Tamer Özsu of the Data Systems Group, along with Professor Ed Lank of the Human-Computer Interation Group, have been named 2018 David R. Cheriton Faculty Fellows, positions they will hold until 2021. These prestigious three-year fellowships support the work of leading faculty members in the School of Computer Science and are made possible through the David R. Cheriton Endowment for Excellence in Computer Science.

In total, the Cheriton Endowment for Excellence in Computer Science supports six Faculty Fellowships, with two Fellowships awarded for three-year terms selected each year. The two Cheriton Faculty Fellowships awarded effective May 2017 and ending April 2020 were to Professors Urs Hengartner and Bernard Wong. Professors Tim Brecht and Charles Clarke hold continuing fellowships ending in April 2019.

M. Tamer Özsu is a University Professor at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. He was the Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science from January 2007 to June 2010 and the Associate Dean of Research of the Faculty of Mathematics from January 2014 to June 2016.

His research is in data management focusing on large-scale data distribution and management of non-traditional data currently focusing on graph and RDF data. His publications include the book Principles of Distributed Database Systems (with Patrick Valduriez), which is now in its third edition. He has also edited, with Ling Liu, the Encyclopedia of Database Systems. He was the Founding Series Editor of Synthesis Lectures on Data Management (Morgan & Claypool), and is now the Editor-in-Chief of ACM Books. He serves on the editorial boards of three journals, and two book Series.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an elected member of the Science Academy (Turkey), and a member of Sigma Xi. He was awarded the ACM SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award in 2015, ACM SIGMOD Contributions Award in 2008 and the Ohio State University College of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2008.

Edward Lank is a professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. He was the co-founder of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, and continues to co-direct the lab.

He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and an Honours Bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Prince Edward Island. He joined the faculty at Waterloo in 2006. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at San Francisco State University. He did post-doctoral work at Xerox PARC in 2001.

Edward’s primary research interests are in intelligent user interfaces, gestural interaction, and movement modelling. His current projects include work in mechanisms for leveraging reject rates to increase the perceived reliability of recognition-based user interfaces; he has explored the design of free-space gesture input languages (e.g., motion gestures) and mechanisms for treating motion gestures; finally, he and his students have explored techniques for predicting target locations in goal-directed movements (e.g., pointing) and speed profiles in constrained movements in interfaces. Alongside his primary research areas, Edward is broadly interested in all aspects of human-computer interaction. Among many other topics, he has recently explored persuasive technologies, sustainability, computer-supported cooperative work, usable privacy and security, sketch and diagram recognition, and human-in-the-loop information retrieval.

Edward is a past recipient of a National Science Foundation Career Award, the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for pre-tenure faculty. Alongside research, Edward has been active in administration, serving as Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies (2011–2013) and Associate Director of the School of Computer Science at Waterloo (2013–2015).