April 8, 2004
PLEASE TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO VOTE VIA POSTAL MAIL OR ELECTRONICALLY
Dear ACM Member:
The ACM Constitution provides that our Association hold a general election in even-numbered years for the positions of President, Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer, and Members-at-Large. Biographical information and statements of the candidates appear on the following pages.
Enclosed with this letter is a ballot to be used for the purpose listed below:
Election of Officers: President, Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer, and Election to Council: Five Members-at-Large.
Please Note: You have the option to cast your vote by postal mail or electronically.
Postal Mail Ballot Procedures: Please return your ballot in the enclosed envelope which must be signed by you on the outside in the space provided. The signed ballot envelope may be inserted into a separate envelope for mailing if you prefer this method.
Electronic Balloting Procedures: You may prefer to cast your ballot electronically, if so, please refer to the instructions contained on the ballot.
For security purposes your ACM Member number is not included with your PIN number. Your membership number can be found on your Membership card, or on the label of your copy of Communications of the ACM, or by accessing ACM’s home page: “Membership,” “ACM Web Account,” “Forgot Your Password” (https://campus.acm.org/public/accounts/Forgot.cfm)
All Ballots must be received by no later than 12:00 noon EDT on May 26, 2004. The computerized tabulation of the ballots will be validated by the ACM Tellers Committee. Validation by the Tellers Committee will take place at 10:00 a.m. EDT on May 27, 2004, at Election Services Corporation, 990 Stewart Avenue, Garden City, NY 11530, USA, www.electionservicescorp.com.
Sincerely,
Gerald Segal, Chair, ACM Elections Committee
Candidates for President (7/1/04-6/30/06)
IBM Fellow Emerita
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
Fran Allen has degrees in Mathematics: a B.A. from Albany State Teachers College and an M.A. from the University of Michigan. She joined IBM in 1957 as a programmer at its Research laboratory and retired an IBM Fellow in 2002. Her work on compiling for high performance computers involved several transitions between research and product development, a year at NSA installing a system, and sabbaticals at NYU (the Courant Institute) and Stanford. In 1995 Allen became President of the IBM Academy of Technology and initiated its transformation from a mainly honorary organization to a strong technical resource for IBM. An experienced manager in both research and development, she has extensive, first-hand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities of an international organization.
Allen’s early and continuing work on the theory and practice of program optimization helped shape the science and products used in compilers today. That work and her advocacy for women and minorities have been widely recognized. In 1976 Fran Allen and John Cocke shared ACM’s Programming Systems and Languages Paper Award and in 1997 she received SIGPLAN’s Programming Languages Achievement Award. Other awards include two honorary doctorate degrees and an IBM award named for her work with women: the Frances E. Allen Mentoring Award.
An ACM member since 1959 and a Fellow since 1994, Allen has served on Council (1997-2000) and been active in SIGPLAN, serving two terms on its Executive Committee. She chaired ACM’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Licensing Software Engineers and headed ACM’s Search Committee for Executive Director. She has had leadership roles in many ACM conferences including ACM 97, ACM1 and POPL. She was an Associate Editor of TOPLAS (1979-1990).
Allen is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Engineers, and is a Fellow of IEEE and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has served on several technology policy boards including CISE at NSF (1995-1999), the CSTB for the National Research Council (1994-1999) and CRA (1994-2000). Allen’s current board memberships include CRA-W, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and the National Center for Women and Information Technology.
I am running for President because I want to help transform ACM into the world’s premier information technology organization. I want practitioners, scientists, and engineers worldwide to see ACM as the organization to join to enhance their careers and protect their interests. I want the media to see ACM as the first place to go for reliable information and expertise on IT issues. I want policy makers to see ACM as speaking for the profession. I want ACM to reflect and influence the rapid globalization of industries, marketplaces, workforces, and science. Above all, I want to use my experience and leadership strengths to help ACM leverage its strengths to accomplish these goals.
Our people—our 75,000 members, our volunteers, and our staff—are the heart and soul of the organization, but membership must continue to grow. We must become more relevant to industrial and overseas members. This is a high priority issue and I will use my experience as a leader in an international company to address it.
Our SIGs and Chapters are the networks and spheres of influence that drive technical and personal advances. They are ACM’s field organizations requiring both autonomy and support to remain vital to their mission and healthy for ACM. It is a delicate balance. My leadership experience in both SIGPLAN and the ACM Council will enable me to maintain that balance.
ACM is widely viewed as an American organization with outreach programs and useful assets like its Digital Library. However, most SIGs and some Chapters have a presence in other countries that can and should be the foundation of a truly international ACM. Much more will be needed and I am prepared to take on this challenge.
ACM has significant accomplishments in the education, public policy, professional ethics, and conferences arenas. However, brand ACM is not well known and our influence more limited than the messages we must deliver. We must connect to the media and public policy makers more effectively and more boldly. I will make that a high priority.
ACM has been a key enabler of the IT revolution. Our publications, SIGs, conferences, and Digital Library have been central to defining the science, engineering, and practice that exist today. I will make sure these assets are on the cutting edge and widely accessible.
ACM’s support of diversity initiatives for women and minorities is excellent but we must expand our efforts and connect with similar activities. I will use my existing connections to make sure that happens.
ACM is a great organization but not the premier, international organization it can be. ACM’s current leadership recognizes this and has initiated a much-needed transformation. I am running for President to be part of that process, to accelerate it, and to lead it. I have the experience, the energy, and the time to make a difference. If you agree that ACM needs to change, vote for me. Together we will make it happen.
Pardee Chair of Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, USA
I was the first in family to graduate from college, and I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t stop until a Ph.D. After 5 years developing a wafer-scale computer at Hughes Aircraft, I joined U.C. Berkeley in 1977. I spent 1979 at DEC working on the VAX minicomputer. In reaction to its complexity, at Berkeley Carlo Sequin and I developed the Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC). By joining forces with John Cocke’s 801 and John Hennessy’s MIPS projects, RISC became widespread: perhaps a billion embedded RISC processors will be sold this year. In 1984 Sun Microsystems recruited me to start the SPARC architecture, the success of which led to millions of servers from Sun, Fujitsu, and others.
Back at Berkeley, in 1987 Randy Katz and I wondered if we could build dependable storage systems from the new, small PC disks. This led to the now popular Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID); perhaps 80%of server disks today ship in RAIDs.
I spent 1989 working on the CM-5 supercomputer. Back at Berkeley, Tom Anderson, David Culler, and I wondered if we could build a supercomputer using standard desktop computers and switches. The resulting Network of Workstations (NOW) project led to cluster technology used by Inktomi, Scale 8, and other startups.
These experiences resulted in me becoming Chief Scientist for Sun’s Networked Storage Division in 1998 and Scale 8’s Chief Scientist in 2000. Back at Berkeley, Armando Fox and I are now working on the Recovery Oriented Computing (ROC) project.
My reward for RISC and RAID in 1990 was becoming Chair of Berkeley’s CS Division of 1000 students and 100 faculty and staff. I’ve also served as SIGARCH Chair and two terms as CRA Chair—with Maria Klawe as Vice Chair—where we helped CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women, the Federated Research Computing Conference, and the Grace Murray Hopper Conference (ACM cosponsors the latter two.) I’m currently on advisory boards at IBM, Microsoft, Princeton, Santa Clara U., and the IT Advisory Committee reporting to the U.S. President.
All this resulted in 150 papers, 5 books, and the following honors, some shared with friends: from ACM: fellow, SIGMOD Test of Time Award, Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award; from IEEE: fellow, Johnson Information Storage Award, Mulligan Education Medal, and von Neumann Medal; election to the National Academy of Engineering plus its lifetime service citation.
My first resolve as President would be to preserve and promote programs we love, such as the ACM Digital Library, journals, conferences, USACM, Queue, and the Professional Development Centre (PDC).
Having served as chair of a large, top-ranked academic department, as chief scientist at a big firm and at a startup, as chair of SIGARCH, as board member of a many volunteer societies, and most significantly as Chair of the Computing Research Association (CRA), I bring a rare blend of interests, strengths, and perspectives to the role of ACM President. My most relevant experience was as Chair of the Computing Research Association. With current ACM President Maria Klawe as my Vice-Chair, we helped put CRA on its current successful path. I believe the work of CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women and the Grace Hopper Conference were key to the doubling of tenured female CS faculty this past decade.
As President, I would initiate new efforts to extend ACM’s effectiveness through concrete initiatives such as:
- Reach out to new professionals. Fewer new IT professionals join ACM. To recruit them we need local, engaging, ACM-branded events such as a half-day course on a hot topic, ideally as part of an existing IT event such as Java Meetup Days. ACM would partially subsidize these meetings and offer discounts to members. Attendees would discuss new topics, network, and learn about new ACM benefits like Queue and the PDC.
- Reach out to high schools via ACM advisors. Most high school computing teachers are struggling to keep up; therefore, we should grow programs like Java workshops to help guide them (JETT). ACM members could help, including student members who are natural matches to their alma maters. They could offer support, give lectures, and review assignments. ACM advisors from underrepresented groups could help change kids’ images of computing people and help broaden our field down the road. In my view, stereotyping started in the 1980s fuels the downturn of women entering our field. ACM must look for opportunities to improve our image.
- Attract “big idea” papers to conferences. ACM program committees are swamped with submissions, and so quantitatively evaluated papers are the likeliest to be accepted given an 80% rejection rate. But papers with big ideas and little quantitative evaluation once led in important new directions, and we need to make sure they will have a place at ACM conferences. SIGs could reserve a session or two at a conference for big or novel ideas, and have a separate Big Idea Program Committee of past program chairs and professionals noted for such ideas to serve as evaluators. I expect these will be popular sessions and restore a vital missing element of recent conferences.
I hope these examples demonstrate that I can supply the experienced, problem-solving, and farsighted leadership ACM needs. I would love a chance to serve the ACM as its president, and so I ask for your vote.
Candidates for Vice President (7/1/04-6/30/06)
President & CEO
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Telle Whitney received the B.S. (University of Utah, 1978), M.S., and Ph.D. (California Institute of Technology, 1981 and 1985), all in Computer Science. After a brief appointment at the Schlumberger Palo Alto Research Center, she joined Actel Corporation, a provider of programmable devices, where she held a number of diverse positions in software engineering and chip design. Her last role at Actel was as Director of Software.
In November 1998, Whitney was part of the founding management team at Malleable Technologies, a startup in the programmable communication area, acquired by PMC-Sierra in June 2000. She served as Vice President of Engineering at Malleable until its acquisition. She subsequently worked as an Engineering Management Consultant.
In October 2002, Whitney took over as President and CEO of the Institute for Women and Technology, recently renamed to the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Whitney’s professional life has always included time for programs aimed at increasing the presence of women in the field, before deciding to do this work full time. She was co-founder of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, a conference that ACM has always supported and as of 2004, co-presents.
Whitney’s technical interests remain in the chip design area. Her doctoral dissertation was on a transistor level representation for layout. She has worked in both Physical Computer Aided Design and in synthesis for programmable devices.
Whitney serves on the ACM Queue advisory board (2002-), on the National Science Foundation Committee for Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering (CEOSE)(2003-). She is a member of the Mentornet advisory board (2004-), a co-founder of the National Center for Women and IT, a member of the Professional Business Women’s Conference advisory board (2003-) and a member of Notre Dame de Namur University School of Sciences Advisory Board (2003-). Whitney also served on the CICC program committee (1993-1997), and the DAC program committee (1999-2000). She is a member of both ACM and IEEE.
As Vice President of ACM, my primary responsibility is to serve the ACM community as a decision maker on the Executive Committee. As head of a national non-profit, and having worked in Silicon Valley for the last 20 years, I have an extensive track record of leading diverse groups, making informed decisions, implementing those decisions effectively, and managing in a rapidly changing environment. I’ve worked extensively and effectively with large high tech companies, entrepreneurial Silicon Valley companies, and a wide range of academic institutions. In my current role, I also have primary responsibility for raising funds for my organization. These abilities and experiences contribute directly to my work as ACM Vice President. My wide-ranging background equips me well to build bridges between the academic communities and the commercial world, a critical skill with communities whose priorities are all too often in conflict.
In these last two years as Secretary-Treasurer, my actions have followed my passion. I serve on the Queue advisory board, and have since almost the beginning. This magazine’s content serves a very different and important audience within ACM, that of the professional developer. I have also worked to bring an industry voice into the policy and directions of ACM to add to the equally important voice of the current leadership, which often comes from the research community. I’ve also worked with groups inside of ACM targeting the needs of minority populations, including being a member of ACM-W and working with the Committee to Diversify Computing. I also believe that ACM is in a unique position to make a significant difference in a wide range of topics including policy, education curriculum, and research, especially through collaboration with other organizations with similar goals, and I have worked to find attractive partnerships.
ACM can and should encourage collaboration across a broad range of topics, provide information, set public policy, and develop professional ethics. As ACM Vice President, I can and will help to bring that about.
Vice President, Internet Technology
IBM
Somers, New York, USA
As Vice President for Internet Technology at IBM, Stuart Feldman is responsible for creating new applications technologies, corporate strategies relating to the future Internet, and for relations with key universities, standards bodies and government organizations. His research focuses on data-driven computing and high-end computing architectures and implications of networked computing, both for scientific as well as commercial applications. He has published in software engineering (author of Make), programming languages (first Fortran 77 compiler), scientific computing, e-commerce, and other areas of computer science.
He received his AB in Astrophysics from Princeton and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT. He was a computer science researcher at AT&T Bell Labs. He was a research manager at Bellcore in software engineering and computer systems, and also the architect for a large new line of software products. He led the international TINA Consortium technical team. Feldman joined IBM in 1995. He was Head of Computer Science for IBM Research, with worldwide responsibility for growth and focus on research in computing, and was also Director of IBM’s Institute for Advanced Commerce.
Feldman is a Fellow of the ACM. He was Chair of SIGPLAN (1991-93), after serving as Vice Chair and Member at Large, and was the founding chair of SIGecom (1999-2003). He is a SIG Governing Board representative to the ACM Council. He is a member of the editorial board of ACM Queue magazine, and is conference co-chair of WWW 2004. He has been chair and program committee member of numerous conferences and is a member of SIGecom, SIGPLAN, and SIGSOFT.
In addition, Feldman is a Fellow of IEEE and member of the editorial board of IEEE Internet Computing. He has been a member of the Board of AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) and of the CRA (Computing Research Association). He is a Consulting Professor of Information Technology at Carnegie-Mellon and has taught courses at Berkeley, Princeton, and Yale. He is a member of the Board of the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA.
ACM is doing well, but times are changing and we must move even faster to meet the needs of our community. ACM is succeeding by conventional measures—finances are strong, membership is stable, headquarters staff is excellent, the Digital Library is booming. ACM has focused on the fundamentals of the computing sciences and their social implications and is the recognized best organization for conferences and publications. It has been a pleasure being a member of and active participant in the Association for many years.
Nonetheless, ACM must move to support a more service-oriented, international, and practice-oriented population. The SIGs have been the core of ACM for many of us. The conferences are strong, new publications are being started, yet membership and active participation continue to drop. As the technology grows in complexity and importance, ACM should provide knowledge and guidance implementers and policy-makers as well continuing to be the mainstay of researchers.
It is necessary to push even harder to meet new members and clients of ACM. Important steps have already been taken: ACM Queue is an excellent vehicle, providing technically valid and useful information for advanced practitioners. The Digital Library is a great resource and service to the technical community, providing access to much of the computing research literature to people around the world. We need to build on these initiatives to address those who need to design and support applications and services in a rapidly changing technical and working environment. We must pursue other forms of publications, other venues, other ways to interact with the computing community.
We should do even more to expand our role and visibility in the broader computing community. We must increase our actual influence on policy-makers (through USACM, as well as in other countries), and improve the value delivered for members and computing professionals outside the U.S.
In summary, I would accelerate the expansion of ACM’s role in the expanding world of computing while continuing to be the recognized leading organization in research.
Candidates for Secretary/Treasurer (7/1/04-6/30/06)
Consultant
New York, New York, USA
B.A. in Computer Science, Yale University, 1973.
M.A. in Computer Science, Princeton University, 1975.
Joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1978, working on microprocessor architecture and compiler design. From 1978 to 1986 worked in Bell Labs, as it evolved, in processor architecture and implementation and participated in the analysis, specification and design of several large microprocessor projects. From 1986 to 1999 worked in Bell Labs Research, in various areas including processor architecture design and simulation, WAN switch interface design, LAN switch design, residential gateways, packet voice technologies and digital signal processor architecture. Starting in 2000, worked in Lucent Technologies Microelectronics division, responsible for planning future directions in packet voice and LAN technologies. In 2001, the Lucent Microelectronics division became Agere Systems, Inc. Continued to work in strategic planning and market forecasting. In 2003 served as a consultant to the Agere Systems Advanced Systems Architecture group, primarily in the design of network processors.
Became a student member of ACM in 1972 and a full member since 1978. Was Finance and Registration Chair for International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) ’95. Treasurer of the Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC) in ’96. General Chair, ISCA 2000. Served on several ISCA program committees and advisory boards. Served as SIGARCH Secretary/Treasurer, 1993-1999, SIGARCH Chair, 1999 to 2003 and on the SIGARCH Board, 2003 to present. SGB EC Member-at-Large and Large SIG Advisor, 2000 to 2003. SGB Chair 2003 to present.
Member IEEE Computer Society, 1973-present. Served on the program committee and as Proceedings Chair for ICCD 1991 to 1993.
The ACM is fortunate in that the growth of electronic publishing, through the Portal and the DL, has occurred just as some of the large conferences that have sustained the SGB, such as SIGGRAPH, have stalled. The next few years will be challenging for the SIGs, and we are lucky that the ACM is able to give them some breathing room. However, we must keep close watch on the progress, which will require close cooperation between the core ACM and the SIGs. As Chair of the SGB I’ve tried to keep this relationship running smoothly, and as Secretary/Treasurer of the ACM I will do the same from the other side.
The major challenge for the ACM, besides finances, is attracting and retaining members. In order to attract young practitioners, a group outside the academic community that has traditionally been the core of ACM’s membership, the ACM has started some projects, such as Queue magazine, that show great promise. We should continue to develop such programs, but there are always more potential programs than there are the means to run them well. We therefore must manage both our new programs and our relationship with the SIGs carefully, a task that naturally falls to the ACM Secretary/Treasurer. We should continue and extend programs to bring the benefits of the ACM to less-served demographic groups and parts of the world. We should do so creatively as possible, to leverage our own resources and to work with outside organizations, in a manner consistent with our mission.
I have been a member of the ACM for my entire professional career, and I have been closely involved with ACM and SIG management for the last ten years. As the ACM Secretary/Treasurer, I will try to make sure others have the same opportunity for commitment and reward that I have had, so that the ACM can continue to grow and serve the computing community.
Sun Microsystems Laboratories,
Assistant Director
Mountain View, California, USA
Laura Hill’s formal education is in theoretical physics: M.S. M.I.T, 1984; B.A. Reed College, 1982. Her bachelor’s thesis focused on SU(2) Gauge Theory while her Master’s thesis investigated pion photo-production on hydrogen and deuterium.
Hill began her career in the IT department of Morgan Stanley in 1984. During her 10 years there, she built applications in Smalltalk, C++, Adabas/Natural, Assembler and APL programming languages. She worked in the DBA group and was a member of the team that defined the programming language and environment for a move to UNIX in 1988. Hill moved to JP Morgan as VP Object Technology in 1994 and proceeded to establish a practice for Object Technology and Reuse. In 1997 she moved to California as VP of Application Development for Robertson Stephens, and in 1998 moved to Sun Microsystems, first as Director of Application Technology and then to Sun Research Labs as Director of Java Research and later as Assistant Director of the Labs.
Hill’s ACM experience and activities include “Innovate”, Panel organizer, OOPSLA, 2003; Publicity Chair, OOPSLA 2001; Tutorials Chair, OOPSLA 2000; “XML and Objects”, Workshop Organizer, OOPSLA 1999; Tracks Chair, OOPSLA 1999; Panels Chair, OOPSLA 1998; Program Committee Member, OOPSLA 1997; Program Committee Member, OOPSLA 1996; “Collaboration in the Object-Oriented Development Lifecycle; Workshop organizer, OOPSLA 1997; “Perspectives on Reuse”, Panel organizer, OOPSLA 1996; “Managing Object Oriented Projects”, Panel organizer, OOPSLA 1995.
Her other community activities include Leadership Mountain View; KMVT Board UC Davis Scientific Advisory Board; YWCA Top Women in Industry Committee.
Hill’s professional interests include self-organizing systems and complexity; Object-oriented development; Agile methodologies; Chaordic organizations; and computers and society.
ACM is about community—helping it to thrive and the people within it to grow. I am pleased to lend my organizational skills to help make this happen. I would like to see ACM increase its membership and strengthen underrepresented constituencies. I’d also like to see more focus on the electronic community, not just by expanding e-services to existing membership, but by looking at new forms of community that can be enabled by digital capacities. Lastly, I’d like to see even stronger ties between the various community segments—academia, IT practitioners, and engineers.
Community is a central focus for me personally and professionally. I was first attracted to the ACM through the annual OOPSLA conference and supported that community by serving on various conference and program committees. At Sun, I am one of the advocates for Open Community Development activities. I have experience with multiple levels of organization and financial management. I’m currently responsible for several Sun research initiatives as well as Sun Labs processes, procedures, and operations. I’ve directed software development organizations, led emerging technologies teams, served on advisory boards, and facilitated cross-organization working groups.
I began my career in the financial industry, exposing me to both the industrial and research communities within ACM. During my tenure at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, I established a conduit between our IT departments and the computing industry through my emerging technologies group and by serving on customer advisory boards for Parc Place Systems, Gemstone, and IBM.
I will bring my strong organizational abilities and unique perspective to this opportunity, increasing the effectiveness of the ACM Council and producing tangible results for ACM members.
Candidates for Members at Large (7/1/04-6/30/06)
Professor
Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique
Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France
Michel Beaudouin-Lafon received an engineering degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from a French “Grande Ecole” ((ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, 1982), a Ph.D. in Computer Science (1985) and an “habilitation à diriger des recherches” ((1992) from Universtité Paris-Sud. Professional career at the Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique (LRI) at Université Paris-Sud near Paris (France): Lecturer (1984), Assistant Professor (1988), Professor (1992), Full Professor (1997). Visiting Professor at University of Aarhus, Denmark (1998-2000).
Created the Human-Computer Interaction research group at LRI: advanced interaction techniques, computer-supported cooperative work, information visualization, engineering of interactive systems. Author of over 90 publications, including a text book on object-oriented programming, and editor of a book on computer-supported cooperative work.
Director of LRI (2002-present): 180 faculty, PhD students and staff. Adjunct director of LRI (1998-2002), Vice-President of Computer Science Department (1993-1998). Expert consultant with the French Research Ministry since 1992. Founder (1996) and first president of the French Human-Computer Interaction Association (AFIHM). Co-chair of French CNRS research network on Human-Computer Interaction. Expert for French network on Software Technology (RNTL).
ACM Committees: Publications Board, Grace Murray Hopper Award, SIGCHI Publications Board. Conferences: ECSCW’05 (Conference co-chair), IHM’04 (Conference co-chair), ACM UIST’02 (Conference chair), ACM CHI’01 (Papers co-chair). Program committees: CHI, UIST, ECSCW, IHM, EHCI, ERGO-IA. Journals: CSCW Journal (advisory board), Revue d’Interaction Homme-Machine (editorial board). Reviewer for numerous French, European and American conferences and journals.
During my first term as member-at-large, among the many topics that were brought to Council, I was particularly involved in decisions such as ACM’s position on the DMCA, the launching of Queue magazine and development of the Digital Library. If re-elected to the ACM Council, I will continue to bring a European perspective and my experience as a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I believe that, in the same way that HCI promotes user-centered design, ACM should put its members at the center of its activities. This includes developing new on-line services, continuing the excellent work done on the Digital Library in terms of breadth, scope and usability, and better representing and defending the increasing number and range of computer users. Raising the computer industry’s awareness of the impact of new computer technology on end users will benefit researchers, developers, users and society in general.
ACM should also increase its role as a leading organization by becoming more truly international. ACM often appears very American to people outside the United States. It needs to develop stronger links with other professional organizations, look at policy issues from a more international perspective, and foster better access to ACM resources, regardless of physical location. This will enrich ACM and benefit all members.
Finally, as a European, I would like to take an active part in the policy-making role of ACM. North America and Europe are often at odds on issues that directly impact computer users, including privacy protection, which is stronger in Europe, and intellectual property, where software is treated differently in different countries. ACM can play an important role in providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and the development of sound policy.
Distinguished Systems Architect
Genentech, Inc.
San Francisco, California, USA
John “Scooter” Morris received a B.S. in Biology, a B.A. in Physics, and a B.S. in Information and CS from the University of California at Irvine in 1977. He received a Ph.D. in Medical Information Science from UC San Francisco in 1990, where he participated in the MacroMolecular Work-Bench project, an improved computing environment for biomedical researchers. His dissertation, Software Architecture and User Interfaces in Biomedical Research was based, in part, on the design and implementation of the computing infrastructure for the MacroMolecular WorkBench.
Morris is currently a Distinguished Systems Architect at Genentech, where he has helped define and implement the firm’s computing environment for the last 19 years. During his tenure at Genentech, he has participated in a wide variety of projects, from implementation of a control system for fermentation to the implementation of a computer-based language for describing DNA construction in research. Morris is currently a member of the Enterprise Architecture group responsible for leading Genentech’s overall computing architecture efforts and evaluating new computing technologies to assist the company in its mission to develop novel pharmaceuticals that address significant unmet medical needs.
Morris was a contributor to the “Internet Strategy Handbook.” He has presented at workshops on diverse topics from the HCI implications of the Web to a tutorial on Genentech’s computing environment at an international forum on bioinformatics.
Morris was co-chair of CHI’92. He was a member of the ACM/SIGCHI Conference Management Committee for 10 years, and participated in the recent CHI 2004 conference committee.
I have had a very long involvement with ACM, from my days as a student member, to my long involvement with SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. During that period, I have benefited from the publications, conferences, and colleagues that my association with ACM has brought me in contact with. During that same period of time, I have also been critical of some aspects of ACM, particularly with respect to the way ACM relates to its membership and to its Special Interest Groups. As a Member at Large, I will have the opportunity to “become part of the solution”. I believe that ACM has made great strides to provide valuable services to its membership, from the ACM Digital Library, to the new publications that augment ACM’s traditional academic journals with content for computing professionals outside of academia and research. I look forward to bringing my experiences as a computing professional and ACM volunteer to serve the ACM membership and the various computing disciplines represented by ACM.
Consultant
Neville-Neil Consulting
San Francisco, California, USA
Mr. Neville-Neil received his B.S. in Computer Science from Northeastern University in 1990.
Senior Software Engineer, Nominum Inc. (2002-present). Working on DHCP servers for very large installations such as former PTTs in Europe.
Member of Technical Staff, Wind River Systems (1995-2001). Managed Core Network Technologies group delivering new versions of Wind River’s TCP/IP product. Multi-instance TCP/IP implementation developed under direction of Mr. Neville-Neil. Developed new driver model for proprietary, embedded OS.
Tutorial Courses: “Deploying and Debugging DHCP” LISA Conference October 2003, APRICOT Conference May 2003; “Socket Programming”, Usenix Conference 2002.
Author of “Code Spelunking: Exploring Cavernous Code Bases”, ACM Queue, September 2003; “Programming Without a Net”, ACM Queue, April 2003; “Evolving the BSD 4.4 Network Interface Framework”, Communications Design Engineering Conference, March 1997; “No-Copy TCP/IP for Embedded Communication Applications”, Communication Design Engineering Conference, March 1997; “User Controllable Network Configuration in VxWorks”, Proceedings of the VxWorks Users Group Meeting, November 1995;”Issues in the Design of Continuous Media Systems”, Pegasus Project Technical Report, 1994; “Current Efforts in Client/Server Audio”, The X Resource, Fall 1993;Frequent presenter at PERNET seminars, San Francisco State University.
ACM Queue Editorial Board (August 2002-present).
Member of ACM, IEEE and USENIX.
Member of San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Western Railway Museum (Shop Division), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ACLU
Although I have been a member of the ACM since my days at college, I have only recently gotten involved in helping the association provide services. Through my experience with ACM Queue magazine I have come to appreciate what can be done by volunteering time to the association. One of the goals of Queue is to broaden the member base of the ACM. As a member at large of the ACM board I will continue to work towards that goal. Connections with related organizations such as IEEE and Usenix are a good example of ways in which we can work with other groups of professionals to enhance our member base. I also think it’s important to reach out to the up and coming members of our profession. Too often people only hear about ACM at school and then forget about the association unless they are submitting papers to conferences. It is just as important for professionals in the field to keep up on cutting edge research as it is for those doing the research. When I was a member of a student ACM chapter at school we received very little in the way of communication or help from the larger ACM itself and were mostly self organized. I think that the association can do more to help and encourage local student chapters and as a member at large I will concentrate on helping the ACM to increase the number of students and young professionals we can attract and retain within the organization. Of course the association should not just concentrate on students or the young. Perhaps the best way to help our members is by making ACM the best place to learn about the field. The ACM has an excellent online library, and that effort should be both applauded and extended. The expansion of offerings from ACM’s digital library will be where I concentrate the rest of my efforts as a member at large.
Professor
Division of Computer and Information Sciences
Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA
A.B. degree in Applied Mathematics, Brown University (1969); M.S. in Computer Science, Stanford University (1971); Ph.D. in Computer Science, Rutgers University (1982). Associate Member of Professional Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill (1971-1976). Assistant Professor (1982-1988), Associate Professor (1988-1994), Professor (1994-present) Rutgers University.
Fellow of the ACM (1998). Member Board of Directors, Computer Research Association (1998-2001). ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award (2001); Voted Professor of the Year for Excellence in Teaching by Rutgers Computer Science Graduate Student Society (2003); Recipient of an NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers (1991-1996).
Chair, Federated Conference on Research in Computing (FCRC, 2003); ACM Council Member at Large (2000-2004); ACM SIGPLAN Executive Committee (1989-1999): Chair, Professional Activities Committee (1989-1993), Vice Chair for Conferences (1993-1995), Chair (1995-1997). General Chair PLDI’99. General co-Chair PLDI’94. Program Chair, PLDI’91. ACM National Lecturer (1985-1988).
Editorial board member of ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Selected panelist, CRA Workshops on Academic Careers for Women in Computer Science (1993, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2003). Selected panelist, New Software Engineering Faculty Symposium (2003). Member, Advisory Board of the Douglass Project for Rutgers Women in Math, Science, and Engineering. Faculty advisor for Rutgers Women in Computer Science (WICSE). Member-SIGPLAN, SIGSOFT, ACM, IEEE Computer Society, American Women in Science, EAPLS.
As the premier IT professional society, ACM should speak out on issues of public policy that may affect its members. This requires both an international policy focus for overarching issues and more localized efforts on issues particular to a region. With the ubiquity of computers in everyday life, it is vital that ACM assume a more active and visible public role, to build the image of computer professionals as responsible involved members of the community and to bring technical expertise to highly politicized policy issues.
The SIGs are a vital part of ACM, and crucial to its health. SIGs are the grassroots of ACM, serving as a training ground for volunteer leaders and as an environment for experimenting with new activities. SIG meetings serve to recruit students to become members of ACM. We can use these venues to develop a sense of professionalism in our students. My 10 years of active SIGPLAN service, and 29 years of ACM membership (including the past 4 years on ACM Council, and chairing FCRC 2003) give me the background to offer knowledgeable support of SIG activities and concerns.
ACM Council needs to further augment and provide more services for our practitioner members, such as the ACM Portal, the Professional Development Centre and the Career Resource Centre. We should continue to offer publications that enable members to track trends in research and practice.
For ACM to be a truly international organization, we must regularly schedule ACM and SIG-sponsored meetings outside of the United States, to facilitate contacts between IT professionals worldwide. Joint sponsorship of meetings with sister professional organizations also should be encouraged, both inside and outside of North America.
Professor
Computer Science Department
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Professor Wise attended the Carnegie Inst. of Technology (B.S. 1967), and The Univ. of Wisconsin (M.S. 1969 and Ph.D. 1971). After a year at the Univ.of Edinburgh he joined Indiana University’s Computer Science Dept. in 1972. He has visited at Oregon State Univ., Tektronix Labs, and the Univ. of Washington.
His research interests span the disciplines of programming languages and style, algorithms, architecture and multi-processing. He is exploring a paradigm that draws these fields together: decomposing matrices top-down by quadrants leads to a local, balanced schedule for high-performance computing. Author of many technical papers, he a co-discoverer of lazy evaluation and inventor of RAM with on-board reference counting.
Within ACM Professor Wise has served as Vice President (2002-2004), Secretary-Treasurer (2000-2002), member of Council (1996-2004), Pubs Board (1995-1999), SIG Board (1987-1997), and the Executive Committee of USacm (US Public Policy Comm., 1993-1996).
He has served as Co-chair of the Presidential Task Force on History (2003-), as Vice Chair of SIG Board. He has been a leader in developing ACM’s policies for electronic publication.
He is a member of SIGACT, SIGSAM, and SIGPLAN which he chaired (1989-1991). He has served as general chair of SIGPLAN’s PLDI (1988) and PoPL (1991) conferences, and on program committees for PoPL (1984) and L&FP (1982), also organizing this last conference.
SIGPLAN awarded him its Distinguished Service Award in 2000.
Wise has served on the board of the Computing Research Assn.(1992-95), for which he chaired the first Federated Computing Research Conf. in 1993. He was a member of IFIP Working Group 2.8 and the committee that developed the Haskell programming language. He is also a member of IEEE-CS and SIAM.
I ask for your vote for Council Member at Large.
ACM serves us primarily as our publishing cooperative. Colleagues world-wide seek ACM first for its excellent collection of journal and conference productions in print, on line, and in person. But, as a scientific and educational organization, ACM also serves laypeople and governments internationally, representing what information technology is and what it can be.
Intellectual property (IP) law, for instance, is still enforced under local principles. Even though computing creates new vehicles for sharing art, existing legislation and case law offer adequate protection for our new media. Overreaching legislation, pushed by the entertainment industry, curtails rights even to view such art. Both as a society and as a publisher with a large data base ACM is uniquely positioned to restrain international IP law via local policy groups like USacm.
Our federation of technical groups—the SIGs, publications, and chapters—is a model for addressing policy, education, and science. ACM subunits each tend their area, but also gather to participate on global issues. Turmoil within these technical groups must never become too insular.
Your acceptance of ACM’s Portal and DL opens a new era of distinguished, accessible archives. Together with other societies our challenge is to develop them, assuring their perpetual maintenance and migration to new technologies, and to price them affordably to readers and to libraries. Practitioners, in particular, need new coverage. Our challenge, then, is to sustain ACM quality with access so open, reliable, and useful that the Portal is sought first by both authors and readers.
If elected, I’ll steer ACM toward the policy, participation, and publication outlined above. Thank you for your support.
Professor of Computer Science
School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS)
University of Southampton
Southampton, Hants, UK
Wendy Hall received a BSc with honors (Mathematics, University of Southampton, 1974); Ph.D. (Pure Mathematics, University of Southampton, 1977); and MSc (Computer Science, City University, London, 1986). She served as Lecturer, Oxford Polytechnic (1977); Lecturer, LSU College of Higher Education (1978); Lecturer (1984); Senior Lecturer (1990); CS Professor (1994), University of Southampton. She’s been head of ECS since 2002.
Hall’s team developed the well-known Microcosm open hypermedia system, which was patented and spun-off into a commercial company (1994), winning an ITEA award (1995) and BCS IT award (1996). She has published over 300 journal and conference papers (a full list is available at http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/info/people/wh).
Hall was named CBE in Queen’s Birthday Honours list (2000); EPSRC Senior Research Fellow (1996-2002); member of UK Government’s Technology Foresight Panel (1995-1998); member of the EPSRC council (1997-2002); executive member of UK Computing Research Committee since 2002; member of UK Prime Minister’s Council of S&T since 2004, Honorary DSc (Oxford Brookes University, 2002). She’s served on the ACM Publications Board since 1999; program co-chair Multimedia’96; conference co-chair Hypertext’97 and Multimedia’98; executive committee member SIGMultimedia (1998-03); member SIGWEB and SIGMM.
Hall has been BCS President since 2003; FREng (2000); FBCS (1996); FIEE (1997); FCGI (2002); CEng (1990). She was VP Publications BCS (1998-2002); member of IW3C2 since 1997; member of several editorial boards and program committees.
I have been a loyal member of the ACM for most of my professional career, largely because of my research interests in hypermedia, multimedia, and the Web. I have helped organize numerous academic conferences and have been an active member of SIGWEB and SIGMM for many years. I have been on the International WWW Conference Committee since 1997, and have worked hard to develop links between the Web community and the ACM.
One of my goals, if elected, is to increase international collaboration at every level within ACM. I have been an active member of the British Computer Society since 1987 and I am currently BCS President (until Oct. 2004), and I believe this experience of working at the highest level in another professional society would be very beneficial on ACM Council.
I was VP of Publications for the BCS before elected its President and I have a great deal of experience in academic publishing. I have also served on the boards of a number of publishing companies. Under my direction, ECS at Southampton is responsible for hosting and developing the open source software for e-prints.org, which provides support for institutional preprint archives. I am a great supporter of ACM’s Digital Library, and I believe the planned developments of the DL are crucial to ACM’s success as it moves forward. I believe I could help strategically steer these developments on Council as I have done during my time on the ACM’s Publications Board.
I am also an active supporter of many initiatives to attract more women into computer science. I have been on several UK government working parties in this area, as well as supporting initiatives within the BCS. I applaud the ACM’s efforts in this area and would use my time on Council to ensure they continue to flourish.
General Manager, Strategy and Communications
Microsoft Research
Redmond, Washington, USA
Mr. Schofield received the A.B. Magna cum Laude (Dartmouth College, 1988).
Software Design Engineer, Program Manager, Group Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation (1988-1997). Group Program Manager, Director of Technology Strategy, General Manager of Strategy and Communications, Microsoft Research (1997-Present).
Co-inventor, U.S. Patents 6,664,979 6,122,558 5,860,073
Chair of SIGCHI, 2001-2003. Member of SIGCHI Conference Management Committee, 1997-2001. General Co-Chair of CHI 96 Conference. Editorial Board member, Interactions magazine.
ACM is now embarking on its second 50 years of existence, and is facing the imperative of remaking itself for the 21st century. It has begun this process by embracing the move to put its information assets online through the Digital Library; this is an excellent first step, but only the first step. There are many greater challenges to come.
First, ACM needs to decide whether it is primarily a membership-based professional society or a public advocacy organization. The answer that it is both equally no longer suffices, as the perceived value of traditional professional societies decline. The leadership of ACM will need to make difficult decisions to chart a new course and define a new model and value proposition for itself.
Second, ACM needs to take a leadership role in raising the quality bar for the practice of computer science. There is a looming crisis in quality, security and reliability in the software industry that has its roots in the education and training of its professionals and implicates all of us. While we may choose a different path, there are important lessons that our community can take from the AMA, the Bar Association, and their counterparts worldwide in defining the role that a professional association can play in upholding the highest standards.
Third, we are facing an urgent crisis: the under-representation of women in the computing field. We are at a critical juncture now; there is enough information about the problem, and enough successes that we can start to build broader programs to effect real change. ACM can provide real leadership, and make a real difference.
These three challenges are ACM’s greatest opportunity to be both relevant and valuable this decade and beyond, and the leadership of ACM will be called upon to face them head-on.
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