Renowned French Engineer and Mathematician Francois Baccelli will join UT Austin in Fall 2012 as the first Simons Chair, which is a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Baccelli is a global thought leader in several fields, including stochastic geometry applied to wireless networks, queueing theory, and various branches of applied probability (especially point processes and martingales). He has also forged and maintained deep industry connections with both telecommunication equipment vendors (Alcatel, Alcatel-Lucent, Qualcomm, and Intel) and service providers (Orange, France Telecom, and Sprint) in which he has used his powerful theories to provide design insights and to guide cellular system implementation and optimization.Prof. Baccelli has a strong recent history of collaboration with many WNCG faculty including Profs. de Veciana, Shakkottai, Heath, and Andrews, the latter of whom he co-authored the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award in 2010 for a survey on stochastic geometry and random graph theory for wireless networks. Dr. Baccelli is currently a Professor and the Director of Research (INRIA) at the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) in Paris, France. He is also a member of the French Academy of Sciences.The Simons Chair was awarded to UT Austin by the Simons Foundation in a competitive selection process involving 70 universities. Stanford University was the only other awardee. The Simons foundation has a mission to advance the frontiers of mathematics, in this case through increased collaboration between engineering and pure mathematics.
