Alumni Spotlight: Herman D. Hughes
Dr. Herman D. Hughes (Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science, 1973). Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University (Department of Computer Science and Engineering).
Dr. Herman D. Hughes, received a B.S. degree in Mathematics from Stillman College, a M.A. degree in Chemistry from Tuskegee University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He began his academic career as a high school mathematics teacher in 1959, followed by faculty positions in mathematics at Tuskegee University and Grambling State University. During his academic training, Professor Hughes worked in the summer months both in industry and government (IBM, American Oil Company, Dow Chemical, Advanced Avionics Research Lab). In 1973, Dr. Hughes joined the faculty of Michigan State University (MSU) as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He climbed the academic ranks at MSU to become a Full Professor in 1984 and Professor Emeritus in 2005. While at MSU he also served as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School from 1986 through 1991.
Dr. Hughes became a national and international leader in the area of network traffic management and modeling with respect to wireless and high speed networks.
He designed several schemes for addressing quality-of-service issues central to recent network technologies, wireless ad hoc networks and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The results of his research provided important insight for defining some key algorithms and parameters used by researchers for studying network traffic.
Dr. Hughes' work is published in numerous journals and has been presented at the most prestigious conferences. He served as a National ACM lecturer, and was voted Distinguished Alumnus both by Stillman College and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Professor Hughes' exemplary contributions to research, teaching and service earned him the MSU "Distinguished Faculty Award" in 2000.
Dr. Hughes' most recent research emphasis is quality-of-service (QoS) issues in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET). Specifically, he has developed and published several
techniques and routing schemes designed to enhance QoS. From this work, he upgraded the high-speed networks and performances (HSNP) research lab to a modern wireless communication and high speed networks (WCHSN) lab.
After his retirement from MSU Professor Hughes relocated to Georgia. He was appointed an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he is involved in research and consulting. He is affiliated with Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology, housed in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.