An ECE faculty member since 1979, Bruce Hajek was elected to the National Academy of Engineering a year ago for his many contributions to stochastic systems, communication networks, and control. In February, he was invested as one of the first Founder Professors of Engineering on campus. To the uninitiated, ballroom dancing can seem like organized chaos.
Individual couples move around in what appear to be random patterns.
However, closer observation can reveal some type of regularity. So it's perhaps no accident that ECE Professor Bruce Hajek readily admits to enjoying ballroom dancing. His research, like an adept ballroom dancer, focuses on showing the regularity in what may otherwise appear random. Hajek studies communication networks, and is particularly interested in studying communication as it relates to the Internet, other high-speed networks, and wireless networks. The various sources of randomness in this area could include such things as who is logged on, who wants to connect to whom, or how much data a user wants to send.