Rate My Professor George Bekey

George A. Bekey was a pioneering roboticist and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). Born in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1928, he earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950, an M.S. in Engineering from UCLA in 1952, and a Ph.D. in Engineering from UCLA in 1962. He joined USC in 1962 as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, becoming Associate Professor in 1964 and Full Professor in 1969. Bekey served as Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department from 1978 to 1982, Chair of the Computer Science Department from 1984 to 1989, and Associate Dean of Research for the School of Engineering from 1997 to 2001. He founded USC’s Biomedical Engineering Department and Robotics Research Laboratory, helped establish the USC Information Sciences Institute in 1972, and secured the school’s first major computer system in the mid-1960s. After retiring from full-time duties in 2002, he continued part-time teaching at California Polytechnic State University in biomedical engineering.