The unexpected passing of Dr. Yosef Sherif on January 10, 2012 is a particular shock to those of us who knew and loved him. He was an upbeat, positive individual with a terrific sense of humor. He was a faculty member in the department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences since 1986, and treated his students and colleagues with care and kindness.
Yosef was a prolific researcher, effective teacher, and a wonderful colleague. He taught three disciplines, including operations research, statistics and probability and network communications and security. Prior to his teaching career in the department he was a consultant for the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech, where he was in charge of quality, reliability, security and safety of ground and space missions. Before this he was also a consultant for the United States Army and for Southern California Edison.
Dr. Sherif decided to pursue a career as an educator because he always believed in the beauty of contributing knowledge as a way of continually improving the quality of people’s lives. His passion for teaching emanated from his deep belief that education will foster tolerance, love of diversity and an affinity for peace and justice both domestically and internationally. He loved teaching because he enjoyed the camaraderie and friendliness of the department’s faculty members and appreciated the enthusiasm of his students.
When it came to research, he was a devout fan of innovation and enjoyed the publishing of cutting edge papers on subject matter including chaos, singularity and the future adoption of the semantic web. Recently, in his Sabbatical Fall 2010, he researched and submitted more than five papers. Notably, Dr. Sherif was also the recipient of the Award of Excellence from Emerald Literati Network, a leading publisher of global research, for two research papers for consecutive years (2008 and 2009).
Dr. Sherif was born in Jerusalem and received his education in the United States. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in electrical engineering at Kansas State University, followed by a PhD from Texas Tech University in 1980. When he’s not teaching or researching, he liked to spend his free time meditating with God.
Yosef is survived by his wife, Ellen, and 3 children.
On behalf of the Mihaylo College of Business & Economics, we extend our deepest sympathy to the Sherif Family during this very difficult time of mourning.
