After more than 20 years at Carnegie-Mellon University, one of the nation's best-known electrical engineers has joined Harvard's applied sciences division.

McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science H. T. Kung is a veteran designer of so-called massively parallel computer systems.

The computer systems that Kung studies break down large problems into smaller pieces and employ a large number of processors to solve these sub-problems.

Because each processor can concentrate on its own task, the system as a whole can achieve extremely rapid computing speed. On Cambridge company, Thinking Machines, has built computers that can carry out billions of arithmetic calculations per second.

A 76th-generation descendant of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, Kung says he does not use his full name because no one seems to be able to get it right.

Kung, who was born in Shanghai and grew up in Taiwan, received his Ph.D from Carnegie-Mellon in 1971.

Kung was originally trained as a mathematician and has worked in a number of other fields besides computer design.

"I am a hardware person, but I have been changing fields almost every five years," he says. "It's interesting to try out in every major field."

Now that he is at Harvard, Kung says he intends to devote himself to the study of network technologies, a topic he began to explore at Carnegie-Mellon.

And he says he prefers to talk about his future plans rather than his past achievements.

"Harvard is a diverse place," he says, "and I want to take advantage of the strengths of this university."

Kung says he would like to see Harvard become a leader in computer science.

"We have to push the frontiers," Kung says. 'It takes some years to be the best, but it shouldn't take more than three years to get substantial outcome."

To begin bringing Harvard to the forefront of computer network research, Kung says he hopes to create a new laboratory dedicated to networking.

Most industrialized countries make extensive use of computer networks. Automated-teller machines (ATMs), national information services and Harvard's campus computing system are examples of such networks.