Sorin Lerner will serve as dean of the Bowers College of Computing and Information Science starting this fall, announced Provost Kavita Bala on Thursday.
Lerner leaves behind sunny California, where he served as a professor and chair of the department of computer science and engineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
Beginning Nov. 1, Lerner will take on a five-year appointment as Bowers dean, succeeding Interim Dean Prof. Thorsten Joachims, computer science, and Bala, who served as dean from August 2020 to January and was appointed provost last fall.
Originally from Montréal, Lerner studied computer engineering at McGill University. He then attended graduate school in the computer science department at the University of Washington in Seattle.
He began teaching computer science at UCSD in 2006. There, he was appointed chair of their department of computer science and engineering, led the creation of an artificial intelligence major and earned the University’s 2018-19 Computer Science Excellence teacher of the year award.
In addition to teaching, Lerner develops programming language techniques and researches programming proofs and environments, as well as artificial intelligence.
“It will be a privilege and honor to listen, plan, enable and cheer a constructive, impactful and inspiring future for Cornell Bowers,” Lerner said in an interview with the Cornell Chronicle.
Varsha Bhargava is a news editor for the 143rd Editorial Board and a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be reached at vbhargava@cornellsun.com.
