Beloved Department Chair Passes Away

Mervin E. Muller, age 90, passed away on December 3, 2018. Merv had a long career in academia, development, and industry, and his substantive focus varied from statistics to information technology to international development. He worked for IBM in New York early in his career. Later he spent 15 years at the World Bank in Washington, DC. In academia, he was a professor of Computer Science for 7 years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and finished his career at The Ohio State University, where he was Chairman of the Computer Science Department (‘86-’94), held the Robert Critchfield Professor of Engineering, and was Director of the Performance Analysis Lab.

During his time at The Ohio State University in the Computer Science and Engineering Department, Merv was instrumental in the growth of the department and spearheaded the new building, Dreese 2, which was completed in 1994.

Earlier in his career, he taught at UCLA, Cornell, Princeton, and George Mason University. Over the course of his career he authored 56 publications for professional journals and lectured or consulted in 37 countries. Among his professional honors were election to Fellow of the American Statistical Association, election to the International Statistical Institute, and appointment as the founding president of the International Association of Statistical Computing.

In the “real” world, he spent four years as Director for project “Weld” at IBM, and fourteen years with the World Bank, as Director of Computing Activities and in other senior positions.

Merv will be greatly missed and remembered for all his contributions to academia and industry. A memorial service will be held on Sunday, December 9th, 2018 at 1pm in Upper Arlington, Ohio. Complete details can be found here.