Short bio: Frank Vahid is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside, since 1994. He is co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of zyBooks, which creates web-native interactive learning content to replace college textbooks and homework serving 500,000 students anually. His research interests include teaching/learning methods to improve college student success especially for CS and STEM freshmen and sophomores, and also embedded systems software and hardware. He is also founder and president of the non-profit CollegeStudentAdvocates.org.

Longer bio: Frank Vahid is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside, since 1994. He is co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of zyBooks, which creates web-native interactive learning content to replace college textbooks and homework, serving 500,000 students annually. He is also founder and president of the non-profit CollegeStudentAdvocates.org. He received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1988 graduating with highest honors, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Irvine in 1990 and 1994, respectively, where he was an SRC Fellow. Since 1990, he has co-authored over 200 conference and journal papers, including best paper awards from ASEE (2013, 2014, nominee 2018) and IEEE Trans. on VLSI (2000). He is author/co-author of about a dozen textbooks, including textbooks on introductory programming, digital design, data structures, embedded systems, math, statistics, and more, published by zyBooks and by Wiley, with annual usage by 200,000+ students. He has received various teaching awards from UCR's CS department, from UCR's College of Engineering, and the Innovative Teaching award from UCR. He was program and general chair for the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on System Synthesis in 1996 and 1997, respectively, and for the IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Hardware/Software Codesign in 1999 and 2000. He has been on the steering committee of Embedded Systems Week since its inception in 2003. He is a senior member of IEEE. He has worked as an engineer for Hewlett-Packard and for AMCC, and has consulted for Motorola, NEC, Atmel, AMD, Freescale, and several other companies. He has served as an expert witness and consultant in several embedded systems patent cases. He is the inventor on three U.S. patents. His research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, Philips, Motorola, Xilinx, Intel, TriMedia, NEC, and the U.S. Dept. of Education, among others, totaling over $5 million. His current research interests include teaching/learning methods to improve college student success especially for CS and STEM freshmen and sophomores, and also embedded systems software and hardware.