Fraunhofer USA Appoints New Executive Director of Research Center

College Park , Maryland, May 13, 2005 -- Dr. Rance Cleaveland, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, has been appointed Executive Director of the Fraunhofer USA Center for Experimental Software Engineering (CESE) in College Park, Maryland.

Prof. Cleaveland was formerly Professor of Computer Science at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. He is author of over 100 scientific publications and has served on numerous program and advisory committees for national and international research organizations and technical symposia. He is past recipient of National Young Investigator awards from the National Science Foundation and Office of Naval Research. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University in Ithaca, New New York, in 1987.

Prof. Cleaveland’s research has focused on tools and techniques for ensuring the correctness of software systems. With two colleagues, he founded Reactive Systems, Inc., to commercialize research in this area. RSI now has over 25 customers, including leading automotive and aerospace manufacturers and their suppliers

“I am very pleased to be joining CESE,” said Prof. Cleaveland. “The people are top-notch, and I look forward to continuing to advance an agenda of cutting-edge, customer-driven research on software engineering.”

Fraunhofer CESE conducts research to advance the state-of-the-art in empirically validated software-engineering technologies and provides project support for organizations that develop, acquire and base their business on software. Projects have come from government agencies such as the Department of Defense and NASA and companies like Boeing, Motorola, DaimlerChrysler, ABB, Nokia and Fujitsu. CESE also supports small to medium sized software companies through its close cooperation with the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

CESE is a part of Fraunhofer USA, Inc. a non-profit R&D corporation and is a subsidiary of Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Europe’s largest organization for applied research. Fraunhofer USA operates through technology Centers that are partnered with major research universities in the United States and also with parent research Institutes in Germany. CESE is affiliated with the University of Maryland and the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) in Kaiserslautern, Germany.