Qualls to Chair A-State’s Computer Science Department

Jake Qualls, Hung-Chi Su 

Arkansas State University in Jonesboro has named Jake Qualls interim chair of its Department of Computer Science, effective Aug. 16.

Qualls, assistant professor of bioinformatics, will succeed Hung-Chi Su, who is stepping down to return to full-time classroom responsibilities.

Qualls received his Ph.D. in bioinformatics from the joint graduate program of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both in computer science, from A-State before working as a grid-systems engineer at Acxiom in Conway prior to returning to A-State as a faculty member.

Qualls is also associate director of the Center for No-Boundary Thinking and leads its Division of Advanced Data Science & Learning.

He was recently awarded an Advances in Biological Informatics grant from the National Science Foundation to study artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for emergency room patient stratification. Qualls received a Faculty Research Awards Committee grant as well, to investigate Covid-19 sentiments in social media.

Su joined the department in 2003 after receiving his Ph.D. in computer science at Oklahoma State University. Over the past eight years, he served as interim chair, associate chair, then chair.

In addition, he worked to add three emphases (cybersecurity, data science, high performance computing) to the master’s degree the department offers. At the same time, the department created a new program, a Master of Science in Education in computer science program, and four graduate certificates in new technology areas.