Qiao named SUNY Distinguished Professor

The rank of distinguished professor is an order above full professorship and has three co-equal designations: distinguished professor, distinguished service professor and distinguished teaching professor.

“We are tremendously proud of our faculty who have recently been appointed to the highest rank in SUNY,” said Charles F. Zukoski, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “This distinction recognizes that UB faculty are among the best in the world and have a transformative impact through their research and scholarship.”

Qiao, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is one of the world’s leading authorities on network protocols and architectures, and the inventor of optical burst switching. He also has been at the forefront of pioneering research on integrated wireless systems that have revolutionized the smartphone industry and profoundly impacted the communication infrastructure of the internet, as well as that of video, multimedia and high-end digital services.

A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Qiao has published more than 350 peer-reviewed articles, approximately 140 journal papers, eight book chapters and more than 210 symposium and conference papers. His research that has been cited more than 20,000 times, including 2,700 citations to date of his groundbreaking 1999 article on optical burst switching.

He holds eight U.S. patents and has received almost 50 grants and more than $8 million in total research funding. During the past decade, he also has established himself as a leader in the design and evaluation of Transportation Cyber Physical Systems with connected and autonomous vehicles.

In addition to Qiao,  Jonathan Dewald and John E. Tomaszewski were named Distinguished Professors. According to SUNY, “this distinction is attained through significant contributions to the research literature or through artistic performance or achievement in the case of the arts. The candidate’s work must be of such character that the individual’s presence will tend to elevate the standards of scholarship of colleagues both within and beyond these persons’ academic fields.”

They were among 21 SUNY faculty members appointed to the distinguished professor ranks by the SUNY Board of Trustees at its meeting on May 3.