The Grainger College of Engineering
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science

Saburo Muroga Professorship in Computer Science

Established by Doug MacGregor (MS CS '80) to provide significant recognition of an outstanding faculty member, the Saburo Muroga Professorship in Computer Science honors the late Professor Muroga for his service and dedication to students as manifested through exemplary teaching and guidance. Upon graduating from Illinois, MacGregor was the microcoder and micromachine architect for the Motorola 68010 and 68020, after which he earned a PhD from Kyoto University in 1990. While in Japan, he started a joint venture with Matsushita to build Sun compatible servers and workstations, including the first million transistor microprocessor.  Dr. MacGregor became an executive with Data General Corporation and then Dell Computer, where he ran the desktop and notebook businesses, after which he served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. Originally established as a single Michael Faiman and Saburo Muroga Professorship in Computer Science, the Muroga Professorship was created in 2016 by splitting the original endowment.

Saburo Muroga received his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1958. In 1964, he joined the newly established Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and conducted research in threshold logic, design automation, and computer-aided design of VLSI chips. Professor Muroga was recognized not only for his research, but also for his teaching and guidance of many graduate students.

Recipients