dr m katherine banks director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has announced two new administrative appointments dr costas n georghiades has been appointed assistant agency director in this position he will oversee strategic initiatives facilitate large-scale proposals submitted to funding agencies and pursue funding opportunities for tees and its centers dr teri reed-rhoads has been appointed assistant agency director for workforce development and will oversee the workforce-development efforts of tees and its divisions and centers georghiades associate dean for research and professor and holder of the delbert a whitaker chair in electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m he joined the dwight look college of engineering faculty in 1985 as an assistant professor in the department his general research interests are in the application of information communication and estimation theories to the study of communications systems previously he led the departments telecommunications and signal processing group and was co-director of the vlsi-telecommunications research center a registered professional engineer in texas georghiades is a fellow of ieee he holds a bachelors degree from the american university of beirut and masters and doctoral degrees from washington university in st louis over the years georghiades served in editorial positions with the ieee transactions on communications the ieee transactions on information theory the ieee journal on selected areas in communications and the ieee communications letters for which he served first as an associate editor and then as editor-in-chief he has been involved in organizing a number of conferences including recently as general co-chair for the 2010 ieee international symposium on information theory and has served as chair of the ieee communication societys communication theory technical committee and in various committees of the ieee communications and information theory societies he currently serves as a member of the ieee hamming medal committee the ieee communication societys awards committee and as chair of the ieee wireless communication letters steering committee reed-rhoads also is assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs for engineering assistant dean of academic affairs for the dwight look college of engineering and associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engi­neering at texas a&m she received her bs in petroleum engineering from the university of oklahoma and spent seven years in the petroleum industry during which time she earned her mba she subsequently received her phd in industrial engineering from arizona state university reed-rhoads teaching interests include statistics interdisciplinary and introductory engineering diversity and leadership her research interests include statistics education concept inventory development assessment and evaluation of learning and programs recruitment and retention diversity and equity she has received funding from the national science foundation the us department of education various private foundations and industry she is a member and fellow of asee and a member of the institute of electronics and electrical engineers the institute of industrial engineers and the american society for quality she serves as an abet engineering accreditation council evaluator for asee and is the co-chair of the undergraduate experience council reed-rhoads served as a reviewer of the us national academy of engineerings (nae) 2008 report changing the conversation: messages for improving public understanding of engineering and 2010 report standards for k-12 engineering education she was an invited participant in naes committee on curriculum reform and the nae workshop curriculum: understanding the design space and exploiting opportunities she joined the texas a&m university from purdue university where she received the one brick higher award one of purdues highest honors given by the university president