You might say Janusz Zalewski is the ultimate control freak.

"I like designing things that control other things," says Zalewski, 58, a computer science professor in Florida Gulf Coast University's College of Business. "For example, the cruise control in your car, or the thermostat in your home: These are things we take for granted, not realizing there's a piece of engineering behind them."

Recently the Federal Aviation Administration awarded him, in partnership with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, a grant for more than $200,000 to study software used to design flight-control operations in commercial airplanes. In lay terms: Students will study what makes the complex electronic hardware in a plane work.

"Ultimately, my students will make recommendations to the FAA," Zalewski says. "In the meantime it will allow them to work on a world-class project, make them more competitive in the job market and build FGCU's reputation in hard sciences and engineering."

Born and educated in Poland, Zalewski moved to the United States in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. "When Solidarity took power in Poland, funding for my work essentially stopped. I moved to America so I could continue it," he says.

Zalewski accepted his current position at FGCU in 2002 with a goal of strengthening the computer science program-which still needs a computer lab, a software engineering program and better recruitment of local students, he says. But he also notes the program's many successes.

"Last year our computer science team made it into the finals of an international competition, losing only to a team from Moscow," Zalewski says. "We also had one of our undergraduate students hired by Lockheed Martin. They hire mostly people with master's or Ph.D.s. That gives me confidence we are doing the right thing."