In April of 2017, the FIU Alumni Association will host the Torch Awards Gala at the JW Marriot Marquis Miami. This award ceremony was created in 2000 as the highest honor given to alumni and to a single faculty member by the FIU Alumni Association. Recipients are recognized according to their achievements in their specific professional industry and their contributions to society.
For the past 15 years we have been privileged to recognize FIU’s most outstanding alumni and faculty. Thanks to the generosity of our alumni and friends, we have supported both the First Generation Scholarship and Alumni Center Building Funds,
~ Duane Wiles, executive director of the FIU Alumni Association.
Dr. Mark Allen Weiss will be 2017 Torch Awards Recipient for Outstanding Faculty Award. This will follow his many accomplishments, including, ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education (awarded to a single individual worldwide annually since 1981), AAAS Fellow, FIU Top Scholar, ACM Distinguished Educator.
Mark Allen Weiss is an Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor and Associate Director in the School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University in Miami Florida and also serves as the Undergraduate Program Director.
He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from The Cooper Union in 1983, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 1987, working under Bob Sedgewick. He has been at FIU since 1987 and was promoted to Professor in 1996. His interests include data structures, algorithms, and education, and he is most well-known for his highly-acclaimed Data Structures textbooks, which have been used at hundreds of universities worldwide.