Mourning the Loss of Phuoc Tran-Gia

From 2007 to 2009, the computer scientist was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. In 2015, he was elected Vice President of JMU. In this position, which he held for three years, he was responsible for internationalization, alumni, information technology and public relations, continuously developing all these areas with great commitment – the university awarded him its honorary citizenship for it in 2020.
"We mourn the loss of our esteemed colleague and good friend," says Professor Tobias Hoßfeld, Phuoc Tran-Gia's successor at the chair. 
"He was an outstanding, internationally renowned scientist and mentor, and for many, including me, more than a doctoral supervisor. He was a role model in all areas, but above all as a person! With his vision and charisma, he has inspired and guided many people on their journey through life. We will cherish his memory." 

Phuoc Tran-Gia has co-founded several international IT companies, including the Infosim Group, headquartered in Würzburg, of which he was Managing Director from 1999 to 2002. He was also Technology Consultant of Executives at Deutsche Telekom, Siemens and Datev.
In 2013, Phuoc Tran-Gia was awarded the Fred W. Ellersick Prize by the IEEE Communications Society. In 2016, he received the Arne Jensen Lifetime Award by the International Teletraffic Congress (ITC). This award goes to personalities who have rendered outstanding services in research on the modeling, control and performance of data traffic. All laureates have to demonstrate above-average commitment to the relevant scientific community.
Also in 2016, Phuoc Tran-Gia received the Robert Piloty Prize of the Technical University of Darmstadt, an award for exceptional research and development work in the fields of electrical engineering and information technology, computer science and applied mathematics. Phuoc Tran-Gia was honored for his groundbreaking work on the methodology of performance evaluation and optimization of communication networks, in particular on novel mechanisms of controlling the Internet.

Phuoc Tran-Gia was born in Da-Nang, Vietnam, in 1953. At the age of 18 he came to Germany to study electrical engineering. He graduated at the University of Stuttgart in 1977 with a degree in engineering.
He then worked on the software development of digital switching systems at Standard Elektrik Lorenz in Stuttgart. In 1979 he became a research assistant at the University of Siegen, where he received his doctorate in 1982 with a thesis on "Overload problems in computer-controlled telephone switching systems. Modelling and Analysis".
From 1983 to 1986, Phuoc Tran-Gia headed a research group at the Institute of Communications Engineering and Data Processing in Stuttgart. He then moved to Zurich, where he worked from 1986 to 1988 at IBM Research Division on the architecture and performance evaluation of communication systems. In 1988 he habilitated in Stuttgart with a thesis on "Discrete-Time Analysis of Traffic Theoretical Models in Computer and Communication Systems".