Douglas M. Blough has been appointed as the associate chair for Faculty Development in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), effective January 1, 2018. Blough will succeed Ayanna Howard in this position.

"I'm honored to serve ECE in my new role, and I look forward to helping faculty at all career stages with their professional advancement," he said.

Blough joined Tech’s ECE faculty as a full professor in 1999 and also holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Computer Science. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he was an assistant professor and associate professor on the ECE faculty at the University of California, Irvine for 11 years. Blough received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University in 1984, 1986, and 1988, respectively. He also graduated from the American School in Japan in Tokyo, Japan in 1980.  

Blough's research is in the areas of wireless networks and dependability and security of distributed systems, and he teaches ECE 3020 Mathematical Foundations of Computer Engineering and ECE 6102 Dependable Distributed Systems. As the director of the Advanced Networking and Dependable Systems Laboratory, Blough advises six Ph.D. students and has graduated 15 Ph.D. students while at Georgia Tech and UC Irvine. He has published over 140 refereed journal and conference publications, and his research has been supported by AFRL, DARPA, the National Science Foundation, and numerous companies. 

Blough is currently associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, and he previously served as associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), and was the Committee's chair in 2015 and 2016. He has been a visiting researcher at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and at the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) of the Italian National Research Council in Pisa.

While at Georgia Tech, Blough has been active in both the ECE and campus communities. On the School level, he was the chair of the Computer Systems and Software Technical Interest Group from 2010-2012 and the Computer Engineering Technical Interest Group from 2001-2003. Blough has served as a member of the Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure Committee from 2004-2007 and 2016-2018; the Faculty Recruiting Committee from 2001-2002 and 2012-2015; and the Faculty Honors Committee from 2007-2008 and 2015-2016.

Blough was also a search committee member for both the Farmer Chair and the Arbutus Chair professorships. At the Institute and College level, he represented ECE in the Academic Senate from 2008-2010 and on the College of Engineering Research Faculty Promotions Committee from 2008-2010, serving as its chair in 2009-2010.