Adegbija, Ditzler and Akoglu Promoted

Tosiron Adegbija, who began teaching at the University of Arizona in 2015, has been promoted from assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering to an associate professor with tenure. Adegbija's research revolves around computer architecture with an emphasis on adaptable computing, low-power embedded systems design and optimization methodologies. In 2019, Adegbija received a five-year, $500,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his research on runtime adaptable spin-transfer torque random access memory.

“Dr. Adegbija’s research focuses on developing low-overhead novel architectures and optimization techniques that are applicable to a wide range of domains, such as health care instruments, aviation electronics and the emerging Internet of Things,” said Tamal Bose, department head and professor of ECE. “Dr. Adegbija has made significant national impact in this area of research.”

Gregory Ditzler has also been promoted from assistant professor of ECE to an associate professor with tenure. Ditzler, who also started at the UA in 2015, performs research in data mining and applied machine learning. He teaches control systems, machine learning and digital signal processing. Ditzler earned a 2020 NSF CAREER Award to support his machine learning research to make sure technologies like autonomous vehicles and facial recognition stay secure. Ditzler says the five-year grant can be used to shape his entire career.

“In his short career, Dr. Ditzler has made remarkable impact in research in the field of machine learning for non-stationary and adversarial environments,” said Bose. “He is truly exceptional in securing external funding for his research, which enabled him to establish a strong research enterprise.”

Finally, associate professor Ali Akoglu, who has been with the university since 2005, has been promoted to a full professor. Also a member of the BIO5 Institute, Akoglu researches high-performance computing, reconfigurable computing and adaptive hardware systems. Akoglu also serves as the site director of the NSF’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Center on Cloud and Autonomic Computing. He has worked on an $820,000 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency grant to develop systems on chips that allow software developers to focus their efforts on designing algorithms and applications, rather than matching them to chip structures.

“Dr. Akoglu’s research in productivity-aware scheduling solves the challenge of maximizing high performance computing productivity under a system-wide power constraint,” Bose said. “His research has been supported by diverse funding sources with more than $2.5 million in total from highly competitive programs. Dr. Akoglu has earned a national reputation as a leading researcher in the field of high performance and reconfigurable computing.”