School of Computer Science Dean Martial Hebert has named James Herbsleb to serve as interim director of the Institute for Software Research and Srinivasa Narasimhan to serve as interim director of the Robotics Institute.

Herbsleb, an ISR professor, will begin his new role at the end of August, when current director Bill Scherlis goes on leave. Narasimhan will take the place of Hebert, who became SCS dean as of Aug. 15. Both will serve until permanent leaders are identified for their departments.

Herbsleb is best known for his research in collaboration and coordination on large-scale software engineering projects, and developing and testing a theory of coordination that brings together the technical and human aspects of software development. He has addressed such topics as how development teams can function and collaborate even when they are geographically dispersed. He also has explored issues related to open-source development, both in individual projects and in large-scale ecosystems of interdependent projects.

Herbsleb has received multiple awards, most recently the Outstanding Research Award presented by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT).

Narasimhan, a professor in the Robotics Institute, has established a notable sensing group within the institute. His group focuses on novel techniques for imaging, illumination and light transport to enable applications in vision, graphics, robotics, intelligent transportation, smart cities, agriculture and medical imaging. He has led development of such innovations as programmable headlights, and is leading research into non-line-of-sight imaging. He is associate director of a National Science Foundation Expeditions in Computing that is developing cameras to see deep beneath the skin.

Narasimhan was the inaugural director of the Robotics Institute's first-of-its-kind master's degree in computer vision. He has won a wide variety of awards and best paper citations.