The University of Iowa is hosting the second of three finalists for the vice president for research and economic development position.

Daniel Reed is an executive at Microsoft Corp., an academic and a former chair of the computer science department at the University of Illinois. He will participate in a public forum on Thursday, May 24, during which he will outline his vision for the vice president position at the UI and take questions from the audience.

The forum will take place at 3 p.m. in the Illinois Room of the Iowa Memorial Union (348 IMU).

Reed also will meet with university faculty, staff, and administration leaders during his campus visit.

Reed has been with Microsoft since 2007. As the director of scalable and multicore computing, he built and led research and prototyping on cloud and parallel computing. He is currently a corporate vice president at Microsoft, reporting to the company’s chief research and strategy officer, who reports to chief executive officer Steve Ballmer.

Before joining Microsoft, Reed was the director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, a major collaborative venture of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State University and the state of North Carolina. He earned his doctorate at Purdue University and was an assistant professor in computer science at the University of North Carolina before moving to Illinois, where he rose to full professor, as well as serving as the department’s chair.

He maintains a blog called Reed’s Ruminations.

See the vice president search website for Reed’s curriculum vitae and additional information about the UI position.

The final candidate will visit the university next month and is scheduled to present on June 11. The successful candidate will succeed Jordan Cohen, who has served as the vice president for research and economic development since 2010.

Details about each candidate will be made available one day before each campus visit.