Ashok Agrawala Receives Honorary Doctorate

Professor Ashok K. Agrawala recently received an honorary doctorate in recognition of his outstanding contributions in the field of computer science, by Dayalbagh Educational Institute (deemed university), Dayalbagh, Agra, India, on the occasion of its 39th convocation held on 22nd January 2021. 

An undergraduate in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India and a doctorate in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, Cambridge, USA,  Agrawala joined the department of computer science, University of Maryland, College Park, in 1971. 

For the past fifty years much of his research has been focused in the areas of design and evaluation of systems, real-time systems, networks, wireless systems, system integration, information dynamics, location determination, synchronization, wearables and health informatics.

The founder director of MIND Lab, Agrawala’s pioneering research achievements include clustering for the characterization of workloads in computer systems, techniques for the transient analysis of queues,  Ricart/Agrawala algorithm for distributed mutual exclusion, development of the Maruti Hard real-time operating system, original formulation of information dynamics, development of a series of context-aware systems and optimization of  energy usage for smart buildings. 

The practical applications of his innovative research solutions in the areas of design, implementation and performance of computer systems has gained national and international recognition.

 A Fellow of the IEEE and AAAS, and a member of the ACM and Sigma Xi, Agrawala has authored seven books and over two hundred technical papers. 

In addition to being a professor in computer science, Agrawala has joint appointments in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) and the Department of Electrical Engineering, UMD. He also holds the position of the director of the Maryland Information and Network Dynamics and is a core faculty member of the UMD’s recently established Brain and Behavior Institute.

Established in 1980, Dayalbagh Educational Institute, has a memorandum of understanding with the University of Maryland, College Park which envisages joint research, faculty exchange and distance education.