Michael C. Loui
Biographical Sketch for the Online Ethics Center
Michael C. Loui was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on June 1, 1955. He grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, and he graduated from Punahou School. He received the B.S. in mathematics and computer science from Yale University in 1975. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he earned the S.M. in electrical engineering and computer science in 1977, and the Ph.D. in computer science in 1980, with the support of a Hertz Foundation graduate fellowship. Since 1981, he has served at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, a research professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory, and a member of the campus honors faculty.
Professor Loui regularly teaches courses on digital systems and computer organization, assembly language and real time computing, logic design, computer networks and distributed systems, formal methods, computational complexity, and engineering ethics; he created the last four of these courses. He helped develop a new design laboratory in electrical and computer engineering for freshmen and a new course on digital information technologies for students outside the College of Engineering. In addition, he leads short programs across the campus on engineering ethics, on research ethics, and on college teaching. He organized and led national workshops on teaching for new faculty in 1995 and 2000.
Together with undergraduate and graduate students, Professor Loui conducts research in computational complexity theory, parallel and distributed computation, fault-tolerant software, and ethics in engineering and computing. They have studied optimal on-line simulations between computational models, designed the first distributed election algorithm on complete networks, analyzed fault tolerant consensus protocols for shared memory systems, and introduced informed consent into the theory of privacy. Under Professor Loui's supervision, seventeen students have completed master's theses, and nine have completed doctoral dissertations. He has served on over fifty other doctoral committees. He has given many invited lectures on his research.
Professor Loui has an extensive record of professional service. From 1990 to 1991, he di-rected the Theory of Computing Program at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. He served on the editorial board of Computing Reviews and as a guest editor for Science and Engineering Ethics; he is currently on the editorial boards of Information and Computation, Teaching Ethics, and Accountability in Research. He is a member of the Advisory Board for the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, the Executive Board of the National Institute for Engineering Ethics, and the Board of Governors of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology. He has organized sessions at several conferences, and he has reviewed research and graduate programs at five universities.
As an associate dean of the Graduate College at Illinois, 1996 to 2000, Professor Loui oversaw more than 100 graduate degree programs and 8000 graduate students. He created the Outstanding Mentor Award, launched the Preparing Future Professors project, simplified the course approval process, and started cross-training and annual performance reviews of the staff.
In 1984, Professor Loui won the Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence in the College of Engineering at Illinois, and in 1995, he won the campus's Luckman Undergraduate Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2001, he was designated a University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar. In 1985, he received the Dow Outstanding Young Faculty Award of the American Society for Engineering Education. In 2003, he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, to contribute to an emerging scholarship of teaching and learning.
Professor Loui lives in Urbana with his wife Cindy and their two children. Active in the performing arts in high school and graduate school, he now volunteers as director, pianist, and music arranger for the children's choir at church.