Taufer named David L. and Beverly J.C. Mills Career Development Chair

Michela Taufer, associate professor at the University of Delaware, has been named the David L. and Beverly J.C. Mills Chair of Computer and Information Sciences.

The position is funded through a generous gift from David L. Mills, professor emeritus, and Beverly J.C. Mills, a UD alumna. It is meant to reward exceptional young female faculty talent in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering or Computer and Information Sciences.

“Women have brains as well as men. If we’re not utilizing women engineers, we’re not utilizing half the brain power,” remarked Mills, who was a professor of computer engineering and of computer and information sciences at UD from 1986-2008.

Taufer joined the UD faculty in 2007 as an assistant professor of computer and information sciences. Her research focuses on software applications in computing, cloud computing, performance analysis and modeling multi-scale applications.

In a recent project, she collaborated with researchers from Stanford University and the U.S. Geological Survey to implement a new network of seismic sensors aimed at arming communities with early earthquake detection and warning capabilities.

Taufer was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012. She earned her master’s degree at the University of Padua, Italy, and her doctorate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), Switzerland.

Prior to joining UD, she was an assistant professor and leader of the Global Computing Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas, El Paso. She serves on numerous IEEE committees and is the author or co-author of more than 15 journal articles on parallel computing.

“I am truly honored to be the first recipient of the David and Beverly J.C. Mills Career Development Chair. I feel fortunate to work in an environment at UD where women are empowered to succeed and thrive, and I am grateful to Dr. and Mrs. Mills for their exceptional generosity,” said Taufer.

About David L. and Beverly J.C. Mills

David L. Mills was a professor in the University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1986-2008.

His Network Time Protocol (NTP) was essential to the early development of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANet), which led to the modern Internet. Additionally, he played an essential role in the development of the internetwork gateways and protocols that provide the backbone to today’s Internet.

In 2011, UD named a 5,000 processor, high performance computing (HPC) cluster for the professor.

Today, Mills continues to teach and lead research sponsored by such agencies as the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and National Science Foundation.

Beverly J.C. Mills earned a bachelor of arts degree at UD in 1998. In addition to singing and teaching music, she enjoys judo and motorcycle riding.

The couple lives in Newark, Del.

Article by Megan Marschall

Photo by Evan Krape