Oscar N. Garcia

Born in Havana, Cuba, Dr. Oscar N. Garcia was Valedictorian at Havana High School, enrolled in Electrical Engineering at Havana University until its political closure, transferred to NC State, where he received his BS with honors and MSEE, became a US citizen in 1965, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1969.

His career started at IBM Glendale Development Labs from where he was recruited by his Dean from State, Dr. Harold Lampe, who was starting a College of Engineering at Old Dominion University. Dr. Garcia also taught at the University of South Florida (founding the BS, MS, and Ph.D. programs in Computer Science), The George Washington University, and became NSF’s HCI Program Director. He held the NCR Endowed Chair of Computer Science and Engineering at Wright State University, and was Founding Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of North Texas where he currently is EE Professor. Dr. García was elected national President of the IEEE Computer Society, served in the IEEE BoD, and is a Fellow of the IEEE and AAAS.

Additional honors include the IEEE Computer Society’s Merwin Distinguished Service Award, the IEEE Emberson Award “for outstanding contributions to the technical and educational objectives of the IEEE,” an IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and the Centennial Certificate of the ASEE “for exceptional contributions to the ASEE and the profession of Engineering.”

His published/research interests have been in Computer Architecture, Coding Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Speech Recognition, and recently Quantum Computing.