Richard DeMillo, former dean of the College of Computing, was lauded by a crowd of nearly 200 people for his decades of contributions to the computing field at his retirement celebration on October 21 in the Christopher Klaus Advanced Computing Building. He was inducted into the College’s Hall of Fame two days later.

DeMillo became dean of the College of Computing in 2002. In seven years, he launched three new schools, seven new degree programs, three international programs, and two new research centers. Georgia Tech’s graduate computer science ranking rose from 14th to 9th nationally. Annual expenditures doubled. He oversaw the groundbreaking and construction of the 200,000-square-foot, $80 million Christopher Klaus Advanced Computing Building.

After leaving the dean’s office, he founded the Center for 21st Century Universities, which helped catalyze the launch of the Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS). He then served as the founding chair for the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. 

Remarkably, DeMillo’s work at Georgia Tech is only a fraction of his incredible achievements. To learn more, read this profile.

The highlight of the retirement celebration was a talk by DeMillo himself, titled The Questions that Find Us.

He was introduced by Thomas E. Noonan (ME 1983)83, who served on the GT Computing Advisory Board under DeMillo and other College of Computing deans. 

During the talk, DeMillo highlighted the research questions he addressed throughout his expansive career. Unlike some researchers who go out searching for questions to answer, DeMillo’s work found him. Often, he would walk into a room, identify a problem, and work to solve it. 

Using the Threads curriculum as an example, DeMillo showed the crowd a graph of declining enrollment that began after the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s. As Dean, he saw that the students enrolled in the course were picking and choosing classes to customize their computer science degrees. 

“They were weaving ‘threads’ through our curriculum,” he said. 

By working with the college faculty, DeMillo created the Threads program, which reinvigorated the computer science undergraduate degree and gave Georgia Tech a something new to offer enrolling students. 

From his groundbreaking paper, Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs, which he co-wrote with Richard Lipton and Alan Perlis, to how artificial intelligence is shaping the current higher education landscape, DeMillo walked the audience through the questions that shaped his career and how he changed the landscape of computing.

Before DeMillo spoke, a panel of computer science higher education experts discussed the impact of Rich’s contributions:

• Alessandro Orso, Dean, College of Engineering, University of Georgia 
• Charles Isbell, Chancellor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 
• Jeff Offutt, Chair, Department of Computer Science, University at Albany 
• Eugene Spafford, Distinguished Professor, Purdue University 
• Aaron Bobick, Dean, McKelvey School of Engineering, Washington University

The panel shared anecdotes about DeMillo, from visiting retro video game arcades to the printer-centered job talk he gave when he became dean, and everything in between.

The day ended with toasts and tributes from DeMillo’s friends and colleagues, including a few who had flown in from other countries to attend.

Ann Claycombe of the College of Computing contributed to this report. 

Photos by Terence Rushin and Kevin Beasley/ College of Computing