Xipeng Shen Designated the Adina Allen Term Distinguished Associate Professor
The Board of Visitors at its meeting on September 21, 2012, approved the recommendation of Provost Michael Halleran that Xipeng Shen be designated the Adina Allen Term Distinguished Associate Professor of Computer Science for a three-year term, effective with the beginning of the 2012-13 academic year.
Term distinguished professorships are designed to recognize and reward both excellence in research and a demonstrated commitment to teaching. The professorships are awarded for a single three-year term and are not renewable. For the duration of the term, the holder receives both a salary supplement and an annual research fund. Nominees are required to be tenured Associate Professors at the College of William & Mary on the effective date of the appointment.
Xipeng's research currently focuses on analyzing and predicting the dynamic behaviors of computer programs by exploiting program inputs systematically. In addition, he is looking at data locality enhancement of dynamic simulations for exascale computing, the leading edge in high-performance computing. The first project is supported by a prestigious National Science Foundation CARRER award, while the second is supported by a prestigious Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Research Award. In addition, Xipeng enjoys an appointment as an IBM Center for Advanced Studies Research Faculty Fellow. Over his short career, Xipeng has demonstrated considerable research prowess in developing a lengthy list of publications in well-respected venues in his chosen field. The regard in which he is held by his research community can be seen not only by the acceptance of his papers in top venues and the prestigious funding awards he has received, but also by the number of invitations he receives to serve on the program committees of major conferences in his research area.
In addition to his research, Xipeng teaches courses in compiler construction and compiler optimization and recently developed a popular special topics course on machine learning that made use of Lego Mindstorms. He also works successfully with a number of undergraduate and graduate research students. Yunlian Jiang (PhD '11), whom Xipeng advised, is now working at Google. Kai Tian (PhD '12), whom Xipeng advised, is now working at Microsoft. And Eddy Zhang (PhD '12), also advised by Xipeng, just started as a new faculty member in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University. And both Bo Wu, a doctoral student currently working on his dissertation under Xipeng's direction, and Yunlian Jiang were recipients of Research Fellowships from the IBM Center for Advanced Studies (CAS).
