New York, NY, May 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has announced the election of new officers who will lead the organization for a two-year term beginning July 1. Heading the new team will be incoming President Gabriele Kotsis. Kotsis is Professor and Head of the Department of Telecooperation at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. Joining Kotsis as Vice President will be Joan Feigenbaum, Grace Murray Hopper Professor of Computer Science at Yale University; and, as Secretary/Treasurer, Elisa Bertino, Samuel Conte Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University.
In addition, Members-at-Large elected to four-year terms are Nancy M. Amato, Abel Bliss Professor and Department Head of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tom Crick, Professor of Digital Education & Policy, Swansea University, Swansea, UK; Susan Dumais, Technical Fellow and Director, Microsoft Research Labs, New England; Mehran Sahami, Professor (Teaching) and Associate Chair for Education, Stanford University; and Alejandro Saucedo, Engineering Director (Machine Learning), Seldon Technologies and Chief Scientist, The Institute for Ethical AI & Machine Learning, London, UK.
President-elect Kotsis said her key priorities include using ACM’s global reach and the expertise of its membership to address pressing problems in society. “No other discipline or technology will have more impact on shaping our future than computer science and technology,” said Kotsis. “Global problems must be addressed in a global way, independently from a particular individual, national or commercial interest. Computing can play a role in fighting the CO2 dilemma, fertilizing medical research and healthcare, and protecting our democracy.” Kotsis also emphasized that ACM must continue to be a leading voice for fostering ethics in the field. “Our community must lead, not only from a scientific and technical perspective in being able to provide correct solutions, but also from an ethical and societal point of view,” she added.
Kotsis is a founding member of the ACM Europe Council, serving from 2008 to 2016. She has organized ACM conferences and workshops, and in 2016 received an award in appreciation of her accomplishments regarding the ACM womENcourage conference series. In 2014, she became an ACM Distinguished Member for her contributions to workload characterization for parallel and distributed systems, and for founding ACM Europe. Since 2016, she has been an elected Member-at-Large of the ACM Council.
Joan Feigenbaum, incoming ACM Vice President, echoed Kotsis’s vision for ACM to play an active role in utilizing computing to foster a better future. “ACM members can address myriad threats now facing society,” said Feigenbaum. “These threats combine sophisticated computation in critical ways with politics (as in ‘election hacking’), economics (as in technology-induced unemployment), journalism (as in ‘fake news’), law (as in mass surveillance in the name of national security), international relations (as in ‘cyberwar’), finance (as in bitcoin speculation), and many other fields. In tackling them, computer scientists will work collaboratively with people in social sciences, law, and many disciplines besides the STEM fields with which we have collaborated for decades.”
A member of ACM since graduate school, Feigenbaum has served in many roles, including SIGACT Executive Committee member from 2005 to 2009 and SIGEcom Vice Chair from 2005 to 2011. During her tenure with SIGEcom, she played a leading role in establishing ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC). Most recently, she led the creation of the ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law and served as General Chair for the inaugural symposium in 2019.
Newly-elected ACM Secretary/Treasurer Elisa Bertino, an ACM member for 38 years, would like ACM to be a leading voice in areas including AI and data ethics, data transparency, and sustainability. “I will also focus on important matters, such as broadening diversity in our field, supporting younger researchers and open access to data and publications,” said Bertino. “Last, but not least, I would like to make sure that ACM stays technically relevant by organizing workshops and conferences on new emerging technologies and applications.”
Bertino served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing and coordinating Co-Editor-in-Chief of Very Large Database Systems (VLDB). She chaired ACM’s Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC) from 2009 to 2013. In 2011, she co-founded ACM’s Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY), now considered the main forum for high-quality research on data privacy and security. She is the recipient of the 2019-2020 ACM Athena Lecturer Award.
About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
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