Curators’ Professor has been with UMKC for almost 24 years

Dr. Deep Medhi is a Curators’ Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, as well as the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Coordinator for Telecommunications and Computer Networking. He first came to UMKC in 1989, and since then has earned (among other awards) the UMKC Trustee’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (1996), the UMKC Trustees’ Faculty Fellow award (2005), the iPh.D. Student Council’s Outstanding Doctoral Faculty Award (2009), the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring (2012), and the 2012 N.T. Veatch Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity.

In 1989, Medhi joined UMKC as a research assistant professor when he worked on a project funded by the Sprint Corporation. He moved to a tenure-track assistant professorship in 1991, earned tenure with a promotion to associate professor in 1996, became a full professor in 2000, and became a Curators’ Professor in 2011.

“I feel I have accomplished nothing,” Medhi said in reference to his achievements. “So much could be done, and I could do more.”

In 1989, Medhi was exploring whether he wanted to return to academia.

“UMKC had just recently created a program called Computer Science and Telecommunications, which was unique by itself in the entire country,” he said. “It was interdisciplinary already within the department, which was quite unique, I thought. The second thing that drew me here was that Sprint was headquartered in Kansas City. A person in my area could have some ability to interact with folks in the industry.”

Medhi has helped to shape the master’s program in computer science, and he created seven graduate courses. He is currently working on several projects, some of which are grant funded.

“I am looking at how the network should be in the future. The internet as we have it, the core concept, is already 40 years old,” he said. “The real question is if it can sustain for 10, 20, or 30 years from now. Is there some fundamental paradigm shift we need to make it work for the future?”

Along with dissecting internet architecture, Medhi is also involved in projects dealing with network resiliency, routing, and security.

He said his Ph.D. dissertation topic had nothing to do with computer networking – Wisconsin had only one course, a special topics course, about networking. When they started work on a multi-computer system, several computers connected by a network, Medhi wrote a program to get involved.

“Even then, I didn’t know a lot about how the network actually worked,” he said. “The network is doing well now, but can it continue? Fundamental contributions can be made.”

For more information from Medhi himself, see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCUHAnKFM7c.

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