Castañón Named ECE Chair

November 15th, 2011

College of Engineering Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen has appointed Professor David Castañón (ECE, SE) as the new chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Since the previous chair, Professor Franco Cerrina (ECE), died in July 2010, Castañón has served as chairman ad interim.

An expert in solving problems involving dynamic decisions under uncertainty, Castañón is co-director of the Center for Information and Systems Engineering at the College of Engineering, deputy director of the National Science Foundation’s Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems and associate director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center of Excellence ALERT: Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats.

“I am delighted to announce the appointment of David Castañón as chair of the ECE Department,” said Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen. “His selection is the result of a national search that included seven first-time visitors to the College and a pool of three finalists. David’s record of accomplishment as a researcher, teacher, and as interim chair, made him the clear choice to lead the department’s continued ascent into the ranks of the nation’s best ECE programs.”

“The ECE Department is well on its way to becoming one of the top departments in the U.S., with a worldwide reputation of excellence in research and education,” said Castañón. “I’m looking forward to working with our faculty and students, along with the administrations of the College of Engineering and Boston University, to continue our growth and achieve significant recognition of our accomplishments.”

In a nutshell, Castañón’s research focuses on the acquisition and processing of noisy information, and the use of processed information in support of dynamic decisions. Many of these decisions require the development of new algorithm concepts in dynamic optimization. A previous recipient of the ECE Department’s Teaching Excellence Award, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, supervises graduate students in his lab, and serves as faculty advisor for Boston University’s Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers.

Castañón is the author or co-author of more than 200 refereed publications and articles, including the book Foundations and Applications of Sensor Management. He has been very active in the Control Systems Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, serving as the society’s president in 2008 and receiving its Distinguished Member Award in 2006. He has also served as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.

Before arriving at BU, Castañón was chief scientist at Alphatech, Inc., a defense-related research firm, and worked at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a PhD in applied mathematics. He joined the ECE faculty in 1990 as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 1999.

-Mark Dwortzan