Carl Chang has been awarded the 2012 Richard E. Merwin Medal from the IEEE Computer Society. The award is for outstanding contributions and exemplary leadership and service to the IEEE Computer Society and the computing profession. The Merwin Award is the Society's highest level volunteer service award, and includes a bronze medal and $5,000 honorarium. Chang will travel to the IEEE Computer Society annual awards ceremony on June 13 to accept the award.
Carl K. Chang is Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University. He received a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University in 1982, and worked for GTE Automatic Electric and Bell Laboratories before joining the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1984. He joined Iowa State University in 2002. Chang is 2004 President of IEEE Computer Society. Previously he served as the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Software (1991-94), and as the Chair of the Magazine Operations Committee, Distinguished Visitor, member of the Board of Governors, Secretary of the Society, Vice President for Press Activities, Vice President and First Vice President for Educational Activities, Chair of the Meetings and Services Committee reporting to the IEEE Board of Directors, before being appointed Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Computer (2007-2010), the flagship publication of IEEE Computer Society. He is currently Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Computer. He continues to help the Society publications in chairing EIC search committees, development of special issues, among other tasks.
Carl Chang received the Computer Society's Meritorious Service Award, Outstanding Contribution Award, the Golden Core Award, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal. In 2006 he received the prestigious Marin Drinov Medal from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and was recognized by IBM with the IBM Faculty Award in 2006, 2007 and 2009.
Currently as the Chair of the Standing Committee for IEEE Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMSPAC), Carl Chang has been actively serving as the program chair, general chair and chair of steering committee of many IEEE and non-IEEE conferences. He co-led the model computing curriculum task force jointly sponsored by IEEE Computer Society and ACM and provided oversight on the development and production of the Computing Curriculum 2001 Computer Science Report. He is primarily responsible for the establishment of the Computer Society's industry advisory boards, first for IEEE Software in his position as the EIC, and more recently for the Society's Executive Committee while serving as the EIC for Computer.
Chang is Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of AAAS.