The School of Computer Science will soon be under new management.

Randal E. Bryant will replace James H. Morris as SCS dean on April 1. Morris had been the SCS dean since 1999, but is leaving his current position to pursue ventures at Carnegie Mellon’s West Coast campus.

Bryant has been a faculty member of the School of Computer Science since 1984 and has a courtesy appointment in the electrical and computer engineering and chemical engineering departments. He has been head of the School of Computer Science since 1999.

Identified by University President Jared Cohon in a recent press release as an exemplary professor, Bryant has conducted much research to aid the computer science industry.

He developed a new simulator called COSMOS, designed to provide researchers with information about how their machines will run without damaging materials. According to one of Bryant's papers, COSMOS is about an order of magnitude faster than old simulators used by computing companies, and is now used by companies such as Intel. Bryant also spent time working on a tool called a binary decision diagram (BDD), which allows for formal verification in software and hardware systems.

In 1998, in recognition of the impact of his theroetical work in the commercial computing world, Bryant was named a co-recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery's Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for his aid in the development of symbolic model checking. He has also consulted with many large computing firms, such as IBM.