Lenwood Heath honored with emeritus status
Lenwood Heath, professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been conferred the title of professor emeritus by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The emeritus title may be conferred on retired faculty members who are specially recommended to the board by Virginia Tech President Tim Sands in recognition of exemplary service to the university. Nominated individuals who are approved by the board receive a copy of the resolution and a certificate of appreciation.
A member of the Virginia Tech community for more than 38 years, Heath made significant research contributions to the study of theoretical computer science, algorithms, graph theory, computational biology and bioinformatics, computational genomics, complex networks, and computational epidemiology.
Heath has served as principal or co-principal investigator on 30 grants totaling more than $19 million, conducting disciplinary and multidisciplinary research, with one grant continuing into 2026. Heath established the area of computational biology and bioinformatics in the Department of Computer Science, leading the hiring of six faculty members, five of which remain as tenure-track faculty in the department.
He received the Department of Computer Science Outstanding Department Contributor Award for Exemplary Faculty Service from Virginia Tech in 2019.
He has authored or co-authored 114 refereed journal articles, two book chapters, and 40 conference papers, as well as co-authored or co-edited three books. In addition, he has served the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society as an area editor, is a lifetime member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and is a member of the Association of Computer Machinery.
In the classroom, Heath has taught various undergraduate and graduate classes on the topics of computational biology, computation for the data sciences, theory of computation, and data and algorithm analysis. Heath has directed over 19 master’s degree theses and 20 doctoral theses.
Before joining the faculty at Virginia Tech, Heath was an instructor of applied mathematics and a member of the Laboratory of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Heath received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and a doctorate in computer science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Written by Emily Southern, a senior majoring in multimedia journalism and student writer for Virginia Tech Marketing and Communications
