Dr. Shan Suthaharan, FIET

Dr. Suthaharan received a BSc (Hons.) in Statistics (specialized in Computing) from the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka in 1981, an MSc in Computer Science from Dundee University, United Kingdom in 1987, and a PhD in Computer Science from Monash University, Australia in 1996. Before joining the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in fall 2001, he was the Chairman of the Computer Science Department at the Tennessee State University (TSU) between spring 1999 and spring 2001 and a lecturer at Monash University between January 1996 and December 1998. During 1995 and 1996, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Monash University. He has been the Director of Computer Science Program and was an elected member of the University Undergraduate Curriculum Committee at UNCG.

He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, Principles of Computer Networks, Cryptography and Security in Computing, Art and Code (an interdisciplinary course) and Senior Project. He taught the following undergraduate and graduate courses in the past: Elementary Data Structures and Algorithm, Operating Systems, Computer Vision and Computer Graphics. He has more than 25 years of international and US teaching experience in Computer Science and related fields. He taught at Jaffna University, Monash University, TSU and UNCG.

He was nominated by students for the 2002-2003 and the 2006-2007 College Teaching Excellence Award and the 2004-2005 Alumni Teaching Excellence Award at UNCG and received Advancement in Teaching and Learning Award from UNCG in 2002 and 2010.

His research is focused on the Communication and Security Technologies of Digital Information. He and his research team received a multi-campus grant from UNC to promote High Performance Computing and Computational Sciences (UNCG-PI), and a Math-Bio grant from NSF (Senior Personnel). In 2002 and 2003, he received Summer Research Excellence Awards from UNCG.  In 1997, he received an Australian Research Fellowship and carried out research at the University of Texas at Arlington on Digital Video Quality Algorithms. In 2009 and 2010, he received International Visiting Scholar awards from Melbourne University, Australia and Sydney University, Australia.

In 2007, he also worked as a senior research associate at AT&T Research Labs. In 2001, he served as the General Chair for the 9th IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Signal Processing and Communications Systems, held in Nashiville, Tennessee. He was a senior member of the IEEE from 1997-2010 and served as the IEEE chair for the Central North Carolina Section during 2002-2003 and 2004-2006. He is now an elected Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and an elected member of Sigma Xi.

In 2008, he was nominated for the Research Excellence Award at UNCG. His biography is included in the 18th edition of Who's Who in the World (2000) and in the 56th edition of Who's Who in America (2001). He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Real-Time Image Processing (Springer) and served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Network and Computer Applications (Elsevier).