Georgia Tech Provost Jean-Lou Chameau has named Dr. Ellen Zegura, assistant dean of facilities planning and associate professor of computing, to the position of interim dean of the College of Computing, effective May 6. Chameau made the announcement at a special faculty meeting on April 25, which was open to all members of the College. Zegura will serve as dean while a search committee looks for a replacement, which could be announced as early as this summer.

In January, Dr. Peter A. Freeman, John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of Computing, announced he was stepping down as dean to assume a position with the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Washington as assistant director of NSF for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). He will remain a member of the Georgia Tech Faculty, on assignment to NSF.

In making the announcement, Chameau said, "I'm very pleased that Ellen has accepted my offer to hold this important position during this critical time for the College. Having served the College and Georgia Tech in numerous capacities over the years, I'm confident that the College will continue to perform very well under her guidance and leadership."

As assistant dean of facilities planning, Zegura oversees all aspects of space needs for the College's faculty, staff and students. She obtained D.Sc. , M.S. and B.S. degrees in computer science, and a B.S. in electrical engineering, all from Washington University in St. Louis. She has served as assistant dean of the College since 2000 and as an associate professor since 1999. She joined the College as an assistant professor in 1993 from Washington University, where she served as a research assistant since 1987.

Her research interests lie in the area of wide-area computer networking. Current research focuses on techniques to enable distributed applications to perform well in the face of increasing scale and diversity in network infrastructure, end-system devices and application base. Ongoing projects include active networking to achieve greater network programmability, application and user-driven server selection, adapting network multicast, and development of application-aware network services.