After serving as chair of the Computer Science Department for nine years, Dr. Tony Martinez is stepping down to pursue other duties in the department and his research in the Neural Networks and Machine Learning Laboratory.  In a faculty meeting with the dean and assistant deans from the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Dr. Parris Egbert was named the new department chair, effective June 1, 2008.

Dr. Egbert received bachelors degrees in computer science and mathematics from Utah State University in 1986.  He later attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he completed masters (1990) and doctoral (1992) degrees in computer science. Upon completion of his Ph.D., Dr. Egbert joined the BYU Computer Science faculty.

Dr. Egbert's research interests include real-time 3D computer graphics, global illumination for computer graphics, object-oriented graphics, tools for computer animation, and the creation and navigation of virtual environments.  As director of the 3D Computer Graphics Lab in the BYU Computer Science Department, he is currently conducting research in several areas related to interactive 3D graphics and virtual environments. His work has been published in SIGGRAPH, CVPR, Transactions on Graphics, Computational Intelligence, and other journals and conferences; many of his students have gone on to graduate school or have accepted prestigious positions at animation studios such as Pixar and Industrial Light + Magic. Dr. Egbert is also a member of the executive committee for the Center for Animation at BYU; he and his students have contributed to several of BYU's award-winning animated shorts in the past few years.

Dr. Egbert and his wife, the former Lori Gurr, are the parents of nine children.

Speaking of the changes in the department, Dean Sommerfeldt, of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences said, "[Dr. Martinez] has provided strong and capable leadership to the department for many years.  He has been an effective advocate for the department and has overseen significant growth in the teaching and scholarship activities within the department.  He has helped instill a positive vision throughout the department that promises to yield continued growth even as he leaves his position as chair of the department."  

Dean Sommerfeldt continued, "[Dr. Egbert] brings strong leadership skills to his new position that will help him to foster continued growth in the department.  We look forward to working with him in this capacity, and we are confident that he will oversee continued outstanding teaching in the department, as well as increasingly strong scholarship.  The future appears bright for the department."  

Other changes in the department include the appointment of a new associate chair and graduate coordinator.  Christophe Giraud-Carrier has been appointed to serve as the associate chair of the department, replacing Dr. Bryan Morse, who previously held the position. In addition, Dr. Kent Seamons has been selected to be the department’s graduate coordinator, replacing Dr. Egbert in this position.

Dr. Giraud-Carrier is an associate professor and director of the Data Mining Laboratory in the department. Prior to joining BYU in 2004, he was senior manager at ELCA, a Swiss IT services company, where his responsibilities included the capitalization of data mining expertise, responses to tenders, and the management of various projects for companies, local governments and NGOs. Prior to this, he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, where he founded and led the Machine Learning Research Group. Dr Giraud-Carrier received his bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in computer science at BYU in 1991, 1993, and 1994, respectively.

Dr. Giraud-Carrier is married to the former Isabelle Mauclair, and they are the parents of eight children.

Dr. Kent Seamons has been chosen to replace Dr. Egbert as the department's graduate coordinator.  Dr. Seamons is an associate professor and the director of the Internet Security Research Lab in the department. Prior to joining the faculty at BYU in 2000, Dr. Seamons was the principal investigator on several DARPA-sponsored research projects at the IBM Transarc Lab in Pittsburgh, PA. He was a co-inventor of two patent applications filed in 21 countries by IBM in the area of trust negotiation. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he conducted research in parallel I/O.  Dr. Seamons' current research is the creation of convenient and secure authentication techniques in open systems.  His research interests are in trust and privacy in open systems, usable security, and trust negotiation.  Dr. Seamons has over 45 research publications in the areas of trust and security, parallel I/O, distributed systems, and information retrieval.

Dr. Seamons and his wife, the former Linda Knupp, are the parents of three children.