Sung-Mo Steve Kang, professor and department head of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been named the new dean of the Baskin School of Engineering, starting in January 2001.
A national leader in his field, Kang received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley in 1975. Until 1985, he was with AT&T Bell Laboratories and also served as a faculty member of Rutgers University. In 1995, Kang joined the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As department head, he has directed one of the premier programs in the country.
Kang succeeds Patrick Mantey, who will continue as dean until Kangs arrival in January. In announcing the appointment, Chancellor Greenwood praised Mantey s excellent leadership during the past three years as inaugural dean of the School of Engineering.
The Baskin School of Engineering is poised to grow significantly over the next several years, and I am convinced that Dr. Kang will provide the necessary leadership and vision to guide this growth in a manner that builds on the accomplishments of Dean Mantey and ensures the continuing development of an engineering school of distinction, Greenwood said.
Looking forward to his new role at UCSC, Kang noted the importance of maintaining existing strengths while expanding the engineering programs.
I am challenged and most excited for the great opportunity to work with faculty and staff to make UC Santa Cruz engineering programs of highest quality and at the same time expansive, Kang said.
At Urbana-Champaign, Kang is affiliated not only with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, which he heads, but also with the Department of Computer Science, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Coordinated Science Laboratory in the College of Engineering.
Kangs research interests include computer chip design (specifically, methods of very large-scale integration, or VLSI) and optimization of chip design for performance, reliability, and manufacturability; modeling and simulation of semiconudctor devices and circuits; high-speed optoelectronic circuits; and fully optical network systems. He holds six patents, has published more than 300 technical papers, and has coauthored eight books.
Kang is a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea and the recipient of numerous national and international awards and honors, including the Semiconductor Research Corporation Technical Excellence Award in 1999.
Kang was a visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne in 1989 and visiting Humboldt Professor at the University of Karlsruhe in 1997 and at the Technical University of Munich in 1998. He has served as a member of the Board of Governors, secretary and treasurer, administrative vice president, and 1991 president of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems and has served on the editorial boards of several other journals.

Kangs appointment as dean of the School of Engineering is for a five-year term beginning January 1, 2001, pending final approval by the UC Regents.
The Baskin School of Engineering, established in 1997, is UCSC s first professional school, offering bachelors degrees in computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, and information systems management.
The school also offers master s and doctoral degrees in computer engineering and computer science and plans to offer advanced degrees in electrical engineering within the next two years. Over the next decade, the School of Engineering expects to double the size of its faculty and establish two new departments: Applied Mathematics and Statistics and Biomolecular Engineering.