Dipak Ghosal Named CS Department Chair
Professor Dipak Ghosal has been named the next Bucher Family Chair of the UC Davis Department of Computer Science, effective July 1. Ghosal will bring his experience as an award-winning researcher, chair of the Computer Science Graduate Group and an advocate for innovation and entrepreneurship to the role. He succeeds Professor Matt Farrens, who has led the department for the past five years.
“I am grateful for the support and encouragement that I have received from my department over the past 25 years—it has been an important factor in my professional growth and success,” he said. “I look forward to leading the computer science department to continue to build on its success and, with the help of my amazing colleagues and staff, elevate its profile both nationally and internationally.”
Ghosal received his B.Tech at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, his M.S. at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru and his Ph.D. at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Maryland – College Park before joining UC Davis in 1996.
Since then, he has established himself as an expert on high-speed and wireless networks. When a computer or sensor sends a signal to another node in the network, the network needs to make decisions about how to schedule that data transfer, including how it’s prioritized when there are multiple requests and whether to stop the transfer if it looks malicious.
Ghosal’s team works on how to optimize this processing for speed, efficiency and security for applications ranging from video delivery to traffic signals to wireless networks, quantum networks, sensor networks conservation efforts and high-performance computing. The lab also performs evaluation of computer and communication systems to recommend best practices for clients. He teaches classes in computer networks to both undergraduate and graduate students.
Outside of research, he has made himself as a leader in the CS department as chair of the Computer Science Graduate Group. Since 2020, he has also been the inaugural Prem Chand Jain Family Presidential Chair for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering, where he helps engineering students expand their entrepreneurial mindset by providing resources to implement their innovative ideas.