Serge Salan

Dr. Serge Salan is an Associate Professor of Mathematics & Computer Science in the CBU School of Sciences, where he teaches undergraduate courses in Computer Sciences including Data Structures, Object Oriented Design, and Computers in Problem Solving. He also teaches graduate-level courses in the Master of Science in Data Science and the Master of Science in Computer Information Systems programs. A native of Lebanon, he attended Lasallian schools there from a young age and then studied at Universit´e Saint Joseph, a Jesuit university in Beirut, where he received BS and MS degrees in Telecommunications with a concentration in computer networks. He then moved to the U.S. and enrolled at the University of Memphis, where he earned his MS and PhD in Computer Science.

Prior to joining the CBU faculty in August 2015, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington and Lee University for several years and served as a graduate assistant and research assistant while studying at the University of Memphis.

Dr. Salan has worked on long-term research projects with two Memphis companies — Smith & Nephew and FedEx. The first project was as a collaboration between the University of Memphis and Smith & Nephew, a medical company whose orthopedic division is based in Memphis. The project’s goal was to perform a clustering analysis on human femur bone data, the result of which allowed the company to produce low-cost joint replacement systems.

The goal of the second project, which he worked on with Dr. Pascal Bedrossian (Mathematics & Computer Science), was to automate and improve FedEx scheduling of flights and package routing. Drs. Salan and Bedrossian designed and implemented algorithms that generate a complete flight network and assign routing to packages that reduce the cost of shipment and are then used by FedEx during their scheduling phase.

During the past six years, Dr. Salan has become more active in the field of data science. He presented a data science tutorial aimed at computer science educators during the CCSC Mid-South Conference at Lyon College in 2017, which demonstrated how to include data science in undergraduate programming courses. In 2017 and 2018, he also gave workshops in data analytics and data mining to professionals from companies based in the Memphis area. 

Since 2017, he has been teaching data science, database, and programming courses in graduate Engineering and Sciences programs at CBU. In 2020, he and Dr. Alex Happ (Mathematics & Computer Science) became the coordinators of the university’s new Master of Science in Data Science program.

Dr. Salan’s other research interest is in the field of robotics, wherein he is studying algorithms that generate planning tasks using information from sensors that could be employed in search-and-rescue, surveillance, and mapping endeavors.