Parviz Kermani

While at UCLA Parviz Karmani was a member of the ARPA network research project, which later led to the creation of the Internet. At UCLA he did research in the design and evaluation of switching and flow control techniques in computer communication. His pioneering work on a new switching techniques, the cut-though switching, is now used in all innovative switching and networking architectures. His seminal paper on cut-through switching, originally published in 1978 in Journal Computer Networks, was the top 10 highest referenced paper in the history of that journal, and because of its significant influence, it was republished in June 2014. In December 2014, CUNY recognized him for this contribution with a certificate of appreciation.

While with IBM, Karmani was involved in a number of diverse research projects ranging from theoretical works to product developments, all in computer communication areas such as mobile computing, personal system communications and Internet security, distributed and pervasive computing systems, multimedia distribution and distance learning, system management and autonomic computing. He has made many contributions to a number of IBM communication products for which IBM holds patents.

His last position at IBM was as project manager of the ITA (International Technology Alliance), a $100M, ten-year joint research project between the U.K. and U.S., funded by the U.K. Ministry of Defense and US Army Research Lab, involving scientist from 24 universities and industrial research scientist of the two countries, pulling 120 scientists together.

Kermani is a senior member of IEEE and has many publications in diverse fields of computers and communications. He has organized and chaired a number of international conferences.

Kermani was the general chair of INFOCOM 2002, the major conference in computer and communication networks, and vice chair of Mobicom, the pioneering conference in mobile computing. He has also chaired a number of international conferences and has given lectures in Europe, China, and the Middle East. He is the author and coauthor of 120 technical and scientific papers, a majority of which published in major technical and scientific journals. He is the inventor and co-inventor of 15 patents to which IBM holds license.

While a scientist at IBM Research, he was also active in academia. Kermani was an adjunct professor at the graduate center of Polytechnic University in Westchester, N.Y., where he taught graduate courses in computer communication networks and other fields of computer science from 1987 to 2011. From 2009 to 2010 he was a senior research fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he did research and conducted courses in green computing and communication networks. In 2013, he was an adjunct professor at Manhattan College.

Prior to rejoining UMass, Kermani was a professor at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College of CUNY (2013-2016), teaching all IT courses.