Lectures on Virtual Spaces: From the Past to the Future

Dr. Chang received the B.S.E.E. degree from National Taiwan University in 1965. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967 and 1969, respectively. He was a research scientist at IBM Watson Research Center from 1969 to 1975. From 1975 to 1982 he was Associate Professor and then Professor at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago. From 1982 to 1986 he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology. From 1986 to 1991 he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh. He is currently Professor and Director of the Center for Parallel, Distributed and Intelligent Systems, University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Chang is a Fellow of IEEE. He publishd over 230 papers and 16 scientific books. He is the founder and co-editor-in-chief of the international journal, Visual Languages and Computing, published by Academic Press, the editor-in-chief of the international journal, Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, published by World Scientific Press, and the co-editor-in-chief of the international journal on Distance Education Technologies. Dr. Chang pioneered the development of Chinese language computers, and was the first to develop a picture grammar for Chinese ideographs, and invented the phonetic phrase Chinese input method.

In 1978, Dr. Chang founded Knowledge Systems Institute , which is a graduate school dedicated to advanced education of computer and information sciences. The Institute was accredited in 1991 by North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. It now has about one hundred graduate students. Knowledge Systems Institute has become a model institute of higher learning, realizing Dr. Chang's vision to revive the tradition of Chinese Shu-Yuan as an educational paradigm. In 2002 KSI was rated by U.S. News as one of the engineering schools offering accredited online graduate programs together with such top schools as Stanford University, Columbia University, Purdue University, etc.

Dr. Chang's literary activities include the writing of over thirty novels, collections of short stories and essays. He is widely regarded as an acclaimed novelist in Taiwan. His novel, The Chess King, was translated into English and German, made into a stage musical, then a TV mini-series and a movie. It was adopted as textbook for foreign students studying Chinese at the Stanford Center (Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies administered by Stanford University), Taipei, Taiwan. In 1992, Chess King was adopted as supplementary reading for high school students in Hong Kong. The short story, "Banana Boat", was included in a textbook for advanced study of Chinese edited by Neal Robbins and published by Yale University Press. University of Illinois adopted "The Amateur Cameraman" in course materials for studying Chinese. Dr. Chang is also regarded as the father of science fiction in Taiwan. Some of Dr. Chang's SciFi short stories have been translated into English, such as "City of the Bronze Statue" , "Love Bridge" , and "Returning" . His SciFi novel, The City Trilogy, will be published by Columbia University Press in May 2003.