With a twinkle in his eye, Robert Calderbank leans back in his chair. "I like to organize things. I like to encourage activity," he says, gesturing to the bustling campus outside the windows of his new office. "I like to try to make a difference"

It is that wealth of activity that brings Calderbank, a world-renowned computer scientist and mathematician, to the halls of Duke University. With great pleasure, the Department welcomes Calderbank as a full professor in the Department of Computer Science and as dean of natural sciences for the University.

Calderbank joins Duke following a long career in industry and academia. After completing his PhD in mathematics at the California Institute of Technology in 1980, Calderbank began a long and distinguished career at Bell Laboratories and AT&T as a specialist in coding and information theory. Eventually becoming vice president of research for AT&T, Calderbank designed what may have been the first industrial research lab focused on data on a massive scale, developed algorithms that operate in over a billion dialup modems around the world, and worked out the mathematical framework for quantum computing with MIT professor Peter Shor.

With 25 patents to his name, Calderbank is the co-inventor of space-time codes to distribute a wireless signal efficiently across two antennae, a feature of many of today's wireless routers. In 2004, Calderbank left AT&T for Princeton, where he directed the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics and saw a doubling in mathematics majors at the college during his tenure.

Calderbank, who also takes on joint appointments in mathematics and electrical engineering at Duke, began his post as dean on July 1st and is still getting his feet wet visiting science departments around campus. "I’m learning and listening," he says. "One thing really stands out is how much outreach is going on in the natural sciences," including computer science, he adds, pointing to the work of Professors Jeff Forbes and Susan Rodger. Calderbank, who values interdisciplinary programs, is looking forward to teaching courses in coding and communications that bridge CS and electrical engineering.

Calderbank is joined at Duke by his wife, Ingrid Daubechies, an internationally recognized mathematician and recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Medal in Mathematics. She will be a professor of mathematics at Duke. They have two children.

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