Professor Kyu-Young Whang from the Department of Computer Science was elected as Chairman of the Technical Committee on Data Engineering (TCDE), one of the committees at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

IEEE TCDE, along with Very Large Data Base Endowment (VLDE), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and Special Interest Group on Management of Data, is one of the major database conferences in the world. Professor Whang is the first person from the Asia-Pacific region to be elected as the chairman of the three conferences.

Professor Whang’s term starts in January 2013 and will last for two years. During his term, Professor Whang will lead the worldwide database research field.

IEEE TCDE hosts many academic conventions including the IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) and many other working groups and publishes the IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, a renowned academic journal having the same field of interest.

Professor Whang graduated as a Summa Cum Laude from Seoul National University and received his Master’s Degree from KAIST and Stanford University. He earned his Doctorate Degree from Stanford University and afterwards he became a research staff member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Professor Whang also served as an IEEE Distinguished Visitor and received the Best Paper Award from the sixth IEEE ICED. Currently, Professor Whang is a Distinguished Professor, having authored more than 110 papers in international journals and over 170 papers in domestic ones. He is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow as well.