Prof. Peter Chen received a U-M Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship for his outstanding contributions to undergraduate education.  

Prof. Chen is known as a demanding faculty member who manages year after year to receive student evaluations that are among the highest in the department. He has won the student-run HKN Faculty of the Year contest on several occasions. His talent for expanding the boundaries of teaching possibilities repeatedly has astonished colleagues who initially feared his curriculum overhauls might be asking the students to do the impossible. Case in point was the new course Prof. Chen created for freshmen called Microprocessors and Music. In this course, four-person teams build a music synthesizer in just one term. Students have included creative features such as record/playback, graphic visualization, polyphonics, and games in their designs.

A member of both the Software Systems Lab, and the Advanced Computer Architecture Lab, Pete's current research project uses virtual machines to provide security services.

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The Arthur F. Thurnau Professorships are named after Arthur F. Thurnau, an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan from 1902 to 1904. Mr. Thurnau wished to return to the University something of the value he gained from being an undergraduate on this campus. The Thurnau Professorships help to recognize and reward outstanding faculty whose commitment to and investment in undergraduate teaching has had a demonstrable impact on the intellectual development and lives of their students.