Dr. Hala ElAarag, associate professor of computer science at Stetson University, is being awarded the Society for Modeling and Simulation International’s Outstanding Service Award.

The award, to be presented at the SummerSim ’12 Conference in Genoa, Italy, in July, recognizes ElAarag’s “outstanding and dedicated technical contributions and services to the modeling and computer simulation discipline and to the Society for Modeling and Simulation International,” said Tuncer I. Ören, chair of the society’s Awards and Recognition Committee and professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

A faculty member at Stetson since 2002, ElAarag has been actively involved with the international organization for seven years. This spring, she served as general chair of the society’s Spring Simulation MultiConference inOrlando. She has served in various roles for other conferences and symposiums put on by the organization, including as vice general chair for the 2011 conference, co-general chair of Communication and Networking Simulation Symposium in 2009 and a member of Technical Committee of the Communications and Networking Simulation Symposium since 2005.

“Hala is a superb research scientist who achieves remarkable results with our talented students,” said Dr. Will Miles, professor and chair of mathematics and computer science at Stetson. “I congratulate her on this well-deserved award, and I am very pleased to have her as a colleague in our department.”

ElAarag received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Central Florida and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Alexandria University. Her research interests include computer networks, evolutionary computation, performance evaluation and computer science education. She has more than 45 publications in prestigious international journals and conference proceedings.

ElAarag won a Stetson research award in 2005 and the Best Paper Award at the 11th Communication and Networking Symposium in 2008. She has served as program chair and board member of the Consortium of Computing Sciences in Colleges’ Southeastern Region since 2010. She is a Council of Undergraduate Research Councilor in the Mathematics and Computer Sciences Division, 2011-2014. She serves on the technical committee for many international conferences and reviews for multiple journals.