In late 2017, the Whiting School lost two founding chairs. Robert E. Green Jr., co-founder of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and founder of the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, died on Nov. 21. And Gerald M. Masson, founding chair of the Department of Computer Science and founder of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, died on Nov. 22.

An expert in techniques used to look for flaws that lead materials to fail over time, Green joined Johns Hopkins in 1960. His nationally recognized research helped lead to the establishment of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 1983.

An expert in fault-tolerant computer systems, Masson joined the Department of Electrical Engineering in 1975. He spearheaded efforts to form an independent Department of Computer Science in the mid-1980s and served as that new department’s chair for 15 years. In 2000, he founded the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, now one of the world’s leading centers for information security research and education.

— Lisa DeNike Ercolano