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News Updates:

2022 January
BP elected to 3-year term as IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Lecturer

2022 May-July
BP participated in a series of talks as part of Iran Computer Museum Oral History Project

2022 Ocotber
BP to travel to Istanbul, Turkey, for the 54th reunion of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968

2023 March
BP will mark the completion of 50 years in academia, a journey that began with his March 1973 appointment at UCLA

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Behrooz Parhami's Home Page

Map of the east end of the UCSB campus

Page last updated on 2022 August 21

Affiliation and Contact Information

Professor Behrooz Parhami
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9560, USA

- See the top banner for e-mail and website addresses
- Office location: Harold Frank Hall, Room 5155
- Deliveries: Harold Frank Hall, Room 4155
- Office phone: +1 805 893 3211
- Departmental fax: +1 805 893 3262
- Information for prospective graduate students
- Maps and driving directions for UCSB visitors
- Miscellaneous files & documents to download/read
- IEEE Central Coast Section Technical Talks
- Men Advocating for Gender Equity (MAGE)

Teaching Assignments and Availability

Classroom image

- Undergraduate teaching: ECE 1B (s'21, s'23); INT 94TN (freshman seminar, f'18, f'20)
- Graduate teaching: ECE 252B (s'21, s'23); ECE 254B (w'22, w'23); ECE 257A (f'21, f'22)
- Fall 2022 open office hours (Sep. 22 to Dec. 09): MW 11-11:30 Girvetz 2116; W 1-2 HFH 5155
- Winter 2023 open office hours (Jan. 09 to Mar. 24): TBD
- Spring 2023 open office hours (Apr. 03 to June 16): TBD
- Professor Parhami holds no open office hours during summer months and quarter breaks
- To arrange a consultation meeting by appointment, send e-mail with a few proposed times

Three-Sentence Technical Biography

Behrooz Parhami (PhD, UCLA 1973) is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and former Associate Dean for Academic Personnel, College of Engineering, at University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches and does research in computer arithmetic, parallel processing, and dependable computing. A Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IET and British Computer Society, and recipient of several other awards (including a most-cited paper award from J. Parallel & Distributed Computing), he has written six textbooks and more than 300 peer-reviewed technical papers. Professionally, he is an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor, serves on journal editorial boards and conference program committees, is passionate about puzzles, outreach efforts, & gender equity, and is active in technical consulting.

One-Paragraph Technical Biography

Books by Behrooz Parhami

Behrooz Parhami (PhD in computer science from University of California, Los Angeles, 1973) is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and former Associate Dean for Academic Personnel, College of Engineering, at University of California, Santa Barbara. He has research interests in computer arithmetic, parallel processing, and dependable computing. In his previous position with Sharif (formerly Arya-Mehr) University of Technology in Tehran, Iran (1974-1988), he was also involved in educational planning, curriculum development, standardization efforts, technology transfer, and various editorial responsibilities, including a five-year term as Editor of Computer Report, a Persian-language computing periodical. His technical publications include over 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences, a Persian-language textbook, and an English/Persian glossary of computing terms. Among his publications are three textbooks on parallel processing (Plenum, 1999), computer arithmetic (Oxford, 2000; 2nd ed. 2010), and computer architecture (Oxford, 2005). Professor Parhami is a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of IEEE Computer Society, a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IET, a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and American Society for Engineering Education, and a Distinguished Member of the Informatics Society of Iran for which he served as a founding member and President during 1979-84. Professor Parhami has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Trans. Sustainable Computing (since 2016), IEEE Trans. Computers (2009-2014; 2016-now), IEEE Trans. Parallel and Distributed Systems (2006-2010), and International J. Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems (2006-2012). He also chaired IEEE's Iran Section (1977-1986), received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, and was honored with a most-cited paper award from J. Parallel & Distributed Computing in 2010. His consulting activities cover the design of high-performance digital systems and associated intellectual property issues. Personally, Professor Parhami is passionate about puzzles, outreach efforts, and gender equity.

One-Page Technical Biography

Behrooz Parhami is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and former Associate Dean for Academic Personnel, College of Engineering, at University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Parhami received his BS degree from Tehran University and MS degree from Oregon State University, both in electrical engineering, in 1968 and 1970, respectively. He served as Acting Assistant Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, for 1.5 years after obtaining his PhD degree in computer science from that institution in 1973. From 1974 to 1988, Professor Parhami was with Sharif (formerly Arya-Mehr) University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, where he carried out research in various aspects of computer architecture and was also instrumental in national projects in technology transfer, educational planning, curriculum development, and standardization. He was the principal founder of the Informatics Society of Iran and served as its first President and Editor-in-Chief for 5 years, while at the same time guiding the IEEE Iran Section through a turbulent decade. He made numerous contributions to adapting computer technology to the needs of Persian-language computing and user interfaces and is recognized as a pioneer in this area.

Following one-year visiting (sabbatical leave) appointments at the University of Waterloo and Carleton University in Canada, Professor Parhami joined University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1988, where his areas of teaching and research include computer arithmetic, parallel architectures and algorithms, and dependable (fault-tolerant) computing. He has made important contributions in each of these fields. In the early to mid 1970s, he played a key role in the initiation of an area of R&D that came to be known as "database processors." His current work in parallel processing is focused on VLSI-based and highly parallel architectures, particularly their interconnection networks. In computer arithmetic, he pioneered the discussion of generalized signed-digit number systems and the associated high-performance arithmetic algorithms as a unified framework for dealing with redundant representations and finding optimal designs with a wide range of technologies including binary, multi-valued, and optical logic implementations. In dependable or fault-tolerant computing, he has dealt with the synthesis of reliable hardware and software systems through a unified data-driven methodology and associated voting schemes.

Professor Parhami has published textbooks on parallel processing (Plenum, 1999), computer arithmetic (Oxford, 2000; 2nd ed. 2010), and computer architecture (Oxford, 2005), along with over 300 technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. He is a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of IEEE Computer Society, a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, a member of ACM, a member of the American Society for Engineering Education, and a Distinguished Member of the Informatics Society of Iran. Professor Parhami has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Trans. Sustainable Computing (since 2016), IEEE Trans. Computers (2009-2014; 2016-now), IEEE Trans. Parallel and Distributed Systems (2006-2010), and International J. Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems (2006-2012). He received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984 and was honored with a most-cited paper award from J. Parallel & Distributed Computing in 2010. His consulting activities revolve around the design and evaluation of high-performance digital systems, including intellectual property considerations and use of massive parallelism.

Personally, Professor Parhami is passionate about puzzles, outreach efforts, and gender equity. He has used puzzles as teaching tools at all levels of instruction, from elementary-school math to graduate courses. He maintains the Web page "Math & Fun" to make his experiences in puzzle-based instruction available to the public and he regularly teaches the puzzle-based freshman seminar ECE 1B (Puzzling Problems in Computer Engineering), a course he designed at UCSB. He has been active on the UCSB group "Men Advocating for Gender Equity" and currently chairs it.

Information for Prospective Graduate Students

Graduate admission to UCSB/ECE is highly competitive. We receive hundreds of applications and thousands of inquiries each year. Most inquiries and applications are from international students of whom we can admit a relatively small number, given the limited availability of financial aid for such applicants. Thus, even though Professor Parhami has a general policy of responding to every correspondence or e-mail message, he has made an exception to messages from prospective graduate applicants who typically seek "an assessment of their chances of being admitted or receiving financial aid"; he regretfully must delete all such messages. As a rule, graduate applicants should direct their inquiries to the ECE Department Graduate Admissions Office (for contact information, follow the academic departments link at http://www.graddiv.ucsb.edu and select ECE under "Departments & Programs"). It is, however, appropriate to contact Professor Parhami, after you have formally applied, to indicate your research interests or desire to work with him. Keep such messages brief and to-the-point, including a short paragraph stating your main interests. Do not attach a resume or details of activities/projects. If Professor Parhami finds your work of interest, he will examine your application file and may make a positive recommendation to the admissions committee. Such a recommendation may influence the committee's decision to grant admission or financial aid.

Financial Support is crucial for most graduate applicants. A very small number of incoming students are offered full fellowships for four years, but for this, they must be recommended by the Department to a central fellowship committee, where they compete with graduate applicants from all disciplines. Others may be offered graduate student researcher (GSR) positions with particular faculty mentors; GSR positions are equivalent to research assistantships at other institutions. The most common mode of financial support for incoming graduate students, however, is teaching assistantship. These are granted by the Department's administration, based on recommendations from the Graduate Admissions Committee and the instructional needs of courses that require TAs. Citizens and permanent residents of the United States are also eligible for other forms of fellowships. Although teaching assistantships and fellowships are usually granted for one year, with no guarantee of continued support in subsequent years, good students with normal progress toward their degree objective very seldom encounter problems in securing support for the entire duration of their graduate studies at UCSB. Financial support is offered in rounds. If you are admitted but don't hear from us about financial support by the end of February, this often means that you were not selected for support in the first round. Most admitted applicants do eventually receive support in the second or third round. Some who do not receive support decide to enroll on their own and subsequently obtain financial support during their first year or beginning with their second year.

Advice from Arthur Hailey's The Final Diagnosis

The Final Diagnosis (book cover)

You're up to date. Take my advice and try to keep it that way. It'll be tough to do; make no mistake about it. The phone will ring and it'll be the administrator--talking about budgets. The doctors will come in, and they'll want this bit of information and that. Then you'll get the salesman. Until at the end of the day you'll wonder what happened to it and what you've accomplished; what you've achieved.

That's the way the next day can go, and the next, and the one after that. Until you find a year has slipped by, and another, and another. And then suddenly, one day, you'll find everything you knew is out of date. That's when it's too late to change.

Listen to an old man who's been through it all, who made the mistake of falling behind. Don't let it happen to you! Lock yourself in a closet if you have to! Get away from the phone and the files and paper, and read and learn and listen and keep up to date. Then they can never touch you, never say, "He's finished, all washed up; he belongs to yesterday."