Yan Huang, senior associate dean and director of graduate studies at the College of Engineering, was recently named a distinguished member of the Association for Computing Machinery for her scientific contributions to the field of computing. 

“My work focuses on organizing, making best use of and finding interesting patterns in large amounts of data. For example, a navigation system used to mean only a driver’s GPS location on a map with a static route to their destination. But, today massive amounts of data can be collected by navigation systems and road sensors in real time allowing for routes to be adjusted based on conditions,” said Huang, a professor with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “Now, we can take advantage of all the new data to detect movement patterns, schedule ride sharing and predict and circumvent traffic problems.”

Huang’s research forms core technologies for modern spatial databases and spatial data mining – the process of discovering interesting and previously unknown, but potentially useful patterns from large spatial datasets.

The Association for Computing Machinery is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. Its mission is to use the knowledge and skills of its members to advance computing as a science and profession. It recognizes 40-50 Distinguished Members each year globally from leading universities, corporations and research institutions based on professional experience as well as significant achievements in the computing field.