ACM’s 2010 General Election

The ACM constitution provides that the Association hold a general election in the even-numbered years for the positions of President, Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer, and Members-at-Large. On the following pages you will find biographical information and statements from ACM’s slate of candidates.

ACM members have the option of casting their vote by postal mail or online. Ballots were mailed to members in early April and contain mail and electronic balloting procedures (please contact acmhelp@electionservicescorp.com if you did not receive a ballot).

The ballot is to be used for the election of ACM Officers (President, Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer) as well as two Members-at-Large.

All ballots must be received by no later than 12:00 noon EDT on May 24, 2010.

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 25, 2010.

If you have not done so yet, please take this opportunity to review the candidates and vote via postal mail or the Web for the next slate of ACM officers.

Sincerely,

Gerald Segal, CHAIR, ACM ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

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Candidates for PRESIDENT (7/1/10–6/30/12)

ALAIN CHESNAIS
CTO, SceneCaster
Richmond Hill,
Ontario, Canada

 Biography

ACM and SIGGRAPH Activities

• Since July 2008 ACM vice president
• Since July 2005 ACM SIGGRAPH past president
• 2006–2008 ACM secretary/treasurer
• 2005–2006 SIG representative to Council
• 2002–2005 ACM SIGGRAPH president
• 2002–2004 SGB past chair
• 2000–2002 SGB chair
• 2001 SIGGRAPH Conference International Resources Chair
• 1999–2000 SIG Governing Board (SGB) Vice Chair for Operations
• 1999 ACM EC Nominating Committee
• 1998 ACM Executive Search Committee
• 1998 SIGGRAPH Nominating Committee
• 1997 SIGGRAPH Conference International Chair
• 1995–1999 ACM SIGGRAPH Vice Chair
• 1993–1995 Member at Large ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters Committee
• 1993–1995 ACM Director of Professional Chapters
• 1993–1995 ACM Local Activities Board/SIG Board Liaison
• 1992 Organized the local groups’ booth for the SIGGRAPH 92 conference
• 1991–1995 Chair of the Paris SIGGRAPH chapter

Professional Experience

• Since June 2007 CTO at SceneCaster
• July 2005–May 2007 Vice President Product Development at Tucows Inc
• March 2004–July 2005 Director of Engineering at ATI
• May 2000–November 2003 Vice President, Engineering at TrueSpectra
• 1996–2000 Director of Engineering, Alias|Wavefront
• 1993–1996 Rendering Manager, Wavefront Technologies
• 1992–1993 CG Consultant
• 1987–1992 CTO, Studio Base 2
• 1983–1987 Research Scientist, Centre Mondial Informatique
• 1982–1985 Research Assistant, CNRS

Education

• 1981 L’École Normale Supèrieure de L’Enseignement Technique
• 1980 Diplome d’Etudes Approfondies, Université de Paris XI
• 1979 Maîtrise Structure Mathématique de L’Informatique, Université de Paris VII
• 1979 Maîtrise de Mathématiques, Université de Paris VII

Awards/Achievements

• Articles in various journals and conferences.
• Systéme particulier selected for film show SIGGRAPH 87.
• Opening Sequence selected for film show SIGGRAPH 91.
• Participant in the SIGGRAPH Future Search conference in Snowbird, 1994.
• Participant in the SIGGRAPH strategy meetings in 2000, 2001, 2005 and 2006.

 Statement

I was first introduced to ACM through the annual SIGGRAPH conference over 20 years ago. I immediately joined the local SIGGRAPH chapter in Paris, France and started volunteering for various activities. I haven’t stopped since. Throughout my volunteer career I have focused on many aspects of ACM activities, ranging from chapters, to SIGs, to Council. I have also been a very active volunteer in SIGGRAPH, our largest SIG. With over 20 years of management experience in the software industry and already 6 years of service on the ACM executive committee, I feel well equipped to tackle the issues that the president of this organization is expected to manage. In my role as SIG Governing Board chair, I led the task force that proposed and implemented a new allocation model for the SIGs, anticipating the technology downturn that was to come when the bubble burst and the impact we expected it to have on ACM finances. That model was adopted by the SIGs and helped the organization weather the storm despite multi-million dollar losses engendered by our largest SIG. I then focused my efforts on ACM SIGGRAPH, after being elected president, and took the SIG’s finances from a 2 1/2 million dollar loss when I came in, to generating a modest surplus in my last year.

Today, ACM is a healthy organization that has weathered the recent recession and sees membership rising. The key challenges that I see for ACM in upcoming years have to do with our becoming a truly international organization and attracting younger members into the organization. As a French citizen residing in Canada, I have firsthand experience of what it means to be a non-American member of our organization. I believe that I can use that experience to help ACM truly become the international organization it should be. Specifically, I believe that we should strengthen our presence in China and India, continuing the effort that we have started during my terms as treasurer, then vice president of the ACM. I also believe that our general presence worldwide can further be enhanced through the changes in the chapters program that I proposed to the executive committee and were then adopted by Council last year.

I also believe that we need to do much more in terms of expanding our online presence to better cater to the needs of younger researchers and practitioners. At SIGGRAPH, I created a Facebook group for SIGGRAPH members to be able to exchange ideas and communicate with each other using the social networking opportunities that it provides. I later proposed that we expand this at the ACM level, both on Facebook where our younger members tend to focus their attention, as well as on LinkedIn where our more confirmed professional members tend to focus. I believe that there is much more that we can do along these lines to further raise the level of awareness of ACM and significantly grow our membership by becoming more relevant to the needs of students as well as young researchers and practitioners.

JOSEPH A. KONSTAN
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, MN, USA

 Biography

Education

A.B. (1987) from Harvard College; M.S. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) from the University of California, Berkeley; all in Computer Science. Dissertation Topic: User Interface Toolkit Architecture (event processing, geometry management, data propagation). Advisor: Larry Rowe.

Employment

McKnight Distinguished University Professor and Associate Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota. Previously, Assistant Professor (1993–1999), Associate Professor (1999–2005), Professor (2005–). Co-Founder and Consulting Scientist, Net Perceptions, Inc. (1996–2000).

Professional Interests

Human-Computer Interaction, Software Tools to Support Online Community, Use of Internet to Promote Public Health (HIV Prevention, Medication Adherence).

Honors/Awards/Achievements

ACM Fellow (2008), ACM Distinguished Scientist (2006), IEEE Distinguished Visitor (2003–2005), ACM Distinguished Lecturer (1997–2006). University awards: Distinguished Professorship, Distinguished Faculty Mentor (for mentoring students from underrepresented minority groups), Taylor Career Development award (contributions to teaching). co-Author of one book, 93 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers. Holds 6 U.S. Patents. Awarded 16 NSF grants (8 as PI), 11 NIH Grants (all as co-Investigator), and 9 other government and industry grants. Created 6 new academic courses. Advised/co-Advised students to 8 Ph.D. degrees and 52 MS degrees.

ACM Activities

ACM Council (2006–2008, 2009–2011). SIG Governing Board: Chair (2006–2008), VC Operations (2004–2006). Membership Services Board: Vice Chair (2004–2006).

SIG Activities

SIGCHI: President (2003–2006), Bulletin Editor (1999–2003), Executive Committee (1999–2009). SIGMultimedia Executive Committee (1999–2007). Conference General Chair: UIST 2003, RecSys 2007. Various program committees, doctorial symposia, etc.

Other Professional/Education Organizations

Federal Demonstration Partnership (partnership of universities and U.S. government agencies focused on reducing administrative burden associated with government grants): U of M faculty representative (2002–2007), alternate (2007–2010); elected Faculty Chair and overall vice-Chair of FDP (2005–2007).

 Statement

I am proud to be a member of and a volunteer for ACM, and I am deeply honored by this nomination; I have found my time volunteering for ACM to be immensely rewarding, and I am grateful for the trust of the nominating committee in putting my name forward for ACM’s Presidency.

ACM is a healthy and strong society. Our publications and conferences are leading venues for the advancement of computing. Our digital library has become the resource of record for computing literature. And our work on computing education and professional development are key investments into the future of our field.

As a healthy organization, we are not standing still. Recent improvements include not only the new CACM and enhancements to the Professional Development Center, but also less visible but equally important initiatives in China, India, and Europe, efforts to improve our ability to engage and support women in computing, and efforts to speed our responsiveness to new subareas within computing.

More challenges face us—both those brought from outside and those of our own making. As political pressure for professional certification builds, we must continue to explore our position in this debate and our role if such certification comes to pass. We have an obligation both to our members and to the field to oppose “certification” that bears no relationship to actual ability, and to provide meaningful continuing professional education. Economic and environmental realities force us to confront issues about the future of conferences—how can we maintain the essential quality of experience while expanding access?

We have other issues I also hope to take on, supported by both our volunteers and ACM’s outstanding professional staff. We must finish the process of reinventing ACM’s local activities program, ensuring we understand what local support our members want and need, and providing them with the opportunities to engage with each other and deploy ACM’s resources at a local level. We also must continue to improve our presence outside North America. We must build on our efforts in Europe and Asia to ensure that ACM has a friendly, capable, local face to present to its members worldwide. Third, we must do a better job on inreach—being ready to respond to our members, our conference attendees, and our visitors online with useful and timely information.

But most of all, we must continue to do well what we already do well. As the face of computing changes from year to year, the importance of our efforts to support research, professional practice, and education become ever more important. We must build on our strengths and continue to build new strengths.

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Candidates for VICE PRESIDENT (7/1/10–6/30/12)

NORMAN P. JOUPPI
Fellow and Director, Exascale Computing Lab
HP Labs
Palo Alto, CA, USA

 Biography

Norm received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1984, an M.S.E.E. from Northwestern University in 1980, and a B.S.E.E. from Northwestern University in 1979. After graduation he joined DEC’s Western Research Lab, and through acquisition Compaq and then Hewlett-Packard. From 1984 through 1996 he was also a Consulting Assistant/Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He currently heads the Exascale Computing Lab at HP Labs.

His current research interests include many aspects of computer system software, hardware, and architecture. He has also led the development of advanced telepresence systems, and has contributed to the architecture and implementation of advanced graphics accelerators. He was the principal architect and lead designer of the DEC MultiTitan and BIPS microprocessors. While at Stanford he was one of the principal architects and lead designer of the Stanford MIPS microprocessor, and developed CAD techniques for VLSI timing verification. He holds 45 U.S. patents and has published over 100 technical papers. Norm is a member of ACM SIGARCH, SIGMICRO, SIGGRAPH, SIGMM, and SIGMETRICS.

ACM Service: ACM SIG Governing Board (SGB) Representative to ACM Council (2007–2009), ACM Council Representative to the Computing Research Association (CRA) Board (2008+), Editorial board of Communications of the ACM (2008+), SIG Vice Chair for Operations (2006–2007), ACM SGB Member-at-Large and Conference Advisor (2005–2006), Past Chair of SIGARCH (2007+), Chair of SIGARCH (2003–2007), Vice Chair of SIGARCH (1999–2003), Member of the SIGARCH Board (1993–1999).

Other service: Editorial board member of IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (2001+) and IEEE Micro (2009+). IEEE TCCA advisory board (2002–2005).

Awards: ACM Fellow. IEEE Fellow. 2005 ISCA Influential Paper award. Compaq 2002 Key Patent award. Two SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Workshop on Graphics Hardware best paper awards.

 Statement

Through my previous ACM service I’ve had the opportunity to learn much about its operation. If elected as Vice President I’d like to place a special emphasis on internationalization, diversity, and enhancing membership value.

A very important issue going forward is international expansion of our membership—business and research contributions to computing are becoming increasingly global. Potential members in developing countries can derive significant benefits from relatively low-cost services such as the ACM Digital Library if ACM membership is priced appropriately. Besides mere membership, I would strive to foster volunteer development and encourage service through the world.

Having two children in high school, I have firsthand experience with the awareness and image of computing among our next generation. It is important for students of all backgrounds to understand and be excited about the contributions of computing to society. To enable this they need first class opportunities to study computer science. If elected, I would work in partnership with existing organizations such as the Computer Science Teachers Association to improve the state of K–12 CS education worldwide and improve the diversity of the CS student body. I would also support efforts to revamp the computer science AP program.

While serving on the ACM Council I’ve been a strong proponent of adding value to ACM membership through enhanced services while keeping dues low. Over the last several years this strategy has played an important part in growing ACM membership in an era when membership in other professional societies has been waning. If elected as ACM Vice President, I will continue to look for ways to add value to ACM membership (such as the recent successful revitalization of the Communications of the ACM and enhancements to the ACM Digital Library) at no marginal cost to our members.

During my career I’ve worked in both industry and academia. I believe this experience would serve me well as Vice President. As part of this diverse experience I’ve developed an appreciation of the range of communities served by the ACM, and I believe I can serve them well as Vice President. Finally, I’m prepared to commit the time required to serve at the best of my ability. And I am always eager to listen to your suggestions!

BARBARA G. RYDER
J. Byron Maupin Professor of Engineering Head, Department of Computer Science
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA, USA

 Biography

A.B. in Applied Math, Brown University (1969); M.S. in Computer Science (CS), Stanford University (1971); Ph.D. in CS, Rutgers University (1982). Assoc. Member of Prof. Staff at AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill (1971–1976). Asst. Prof. (1982–1988), Assoc. Prof. (1988–1994), Prof. (1994–2001), Prof. II (2001–2008), Rutgers University, Head – Dept. of CS, Virginia Tech (2008–), http://people.cs.vt.edu/~ryder/

Fellow of the ACM (1998) for seminal contributions to interprocedural compile-time analyses. Member, Board of Directors, Computer Research Assn (1998–2001). ACM Presidential Award (2008). SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award (2001). Rutgers Graduate Teaching Award (2007). Rutgers Leader in Diversity Award (2006). Professor of the Year Award from CS Grad Students (2003).

ACM Secretary/Treasurer (2008–2010), Council Member-at-Large (2000–2008). Chair, Federated Computing Research Conf (FCRC 2003). SIGPLAN Chair (1995–1997), Vice Chair for Confs (1993–1995), Exec Comm (1989–1999). General Chair of: SIGSOFT Int’l Symp on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA, 2008), SIGPLAN Conf on History of Programming Languages III (HOPL-III, 2007), SIGPLAN Conf on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI, 1999, 1994). Program Chair of: HOPL-III (2007), PLDI (1991). Member, Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award Comm and ACM-W Athena Award Comm. ACM National Lecturer (1985–1988).

Member, Ed Bd of Science of Programming (2009–), ACM Trans on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS, 2001–2007), and IEEE Trans on Software Engineering (2003–2008).

Selected panelist: CRA Workshops on Academic Careers for Women in CS (1993, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2003), SIGSOFT New SE Faculty Symp (2003, 2005, 2008). Chair, Virginia Tech College of Engineering High Performance Computing Comm (2009–). Member, ADVANCE VT Faculty Advisory Comm (2008–). Member: SIGPLAN, SIGSOFT, SIGCSE, ACM, IEEE Computer Society, American Women in Science, EAPLS.

 Statement

As ACM Vice President, I will work closely with the President and provide leadership for Executive Committee special projects (e.g., the Membership Task Force). I will continue to support good communication among the Executive Committee, Council, SIG leadership, members and staff. My extensive experience as a SIG leader, General Chair of FCRC 2003, 8 years as ACM Council member, and 2 years as Secretary/Treasurer have prepared me well for these tasks.

I am determined to maintain ACM as the leading computing society, and our representative on issues of public policy worldwide. There are several challenges: expanding ACM into a truly international organization, strongly supporting computing education (K–12, college, postgraduate), providing better services to our practitioner members, and supporting the SIGs.

Recent efforts by ACM that have established relationships with professionals in India and China must be strengthened and supported by recruiting new members from these regions into SIG/ACM leadership. Additionally, we should hold ACM conferences outside of North America, co-sponsored with local professional societies. New contacts for international members should be sought in areas such as Eastern Europe/Russia, South Asia/ Australia and South America.

ACM activities on education should emphasize the importance of our discipline in the 21st century. We need to continue ACM efforts on computing curricula and building bridges to K–12 educators (i.e., Computer Science Teachers Association). New emphases should include: supporting CSTA-like organizations internationally and encouraging local/regional technical conferences for undergraduate and graduate students (e.g., www.research.ibm.com/masplas).

ACM has revitalized the Local Chapters program, offered new opportunities to mentor younger professionals through MemberNet, enhanced the Digital Library and Portal, and redesigned CACM to meet the needs of all members better. Such efforts must continue.

The SIGs must remain a strong, integral part of ACM: developing volunteer leaders, providing valuable research content and tools for the Digital Library, and recruiting students to ACM membership. My 10 years of SIG leadership and 35 years of active ACM membership attest to my commitment to SIG concerns.

I ask for your vote to work for all of these goals.

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Candidates for SECRETARY/TREASURER (7/1/10–6/30/12)

CARLO GHEZZI
Chair of Software Engineering
Department of Electronics and Information
Politecnico di Milano
Milano, Italy

 Biography

Carlo Ghezzi is a Professor and Chair of Software Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He is the Rector’s Delegate for research, past member of the Academic Senate and of the Board of Governors of Politecnico. He has also been Department Chair and Head of the Ph.D. Program. He held positions at University of California Los Angeles, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Padova, ESLAI-Buenos Aires, University of California Santa Barbara, Technical University of Vienna, University of Klagenfurt, University of Lugano.

Ghezzi is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and a member of the Italian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award. He has been a member of the ACM Nominating Committee and of the ACM Software Systems Award Committee. He has been on the evaluation board of several international research projects and institutions in Europe, Japan, and the USA.

Ghezzi is a regular member of the program committee of important conferences in the software engineering field, such as the International Conference on Software Engineering and Foundations of Software Engineering/ European Software Engineering Conference, for which he also served as Program and General Chair.

He served on numerous other program committees and gave several keynote presentations.

Ghezzi has been the Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (from 2001 till 2006) and is an Associate Editor of Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Science of Computer Programming, Service Oriented Computing and Applications, and Software Process Improvement and Practice.

Ghezzi’s research has been focusing on software engineering and programming languages. Currently, he is active in evolvable and distributed software architectures for ubiquitous and pervasive computing. He co-authored over 160 papers and 8 books. He coordinated several national and international (EU funded) research projects. He has recently been awarded a prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.

 Statement

ACM is the leading professional society in the field of computing. For over 60 years, it has been serving the scientific community: researchers, educators, engineers, and professional developers. ACM conferences, workshops, journals, magazines, newsletters, and digital library played a fundamental role in accumulating and disseminating knowledge, creating new knowledge, and linking people. ACM will continue to preserve this fundamental body of knowledge, and will also assist us in future advances in our field.

ACM is increasingly becoming a worldwide professional society. It will need in the future to become even more open, offering services and opportunities everywhere in the world. By its very nature, computing is at the heart of technology that connects the world. It should by no means become the source of divisions and discriminations. ACM should elaborate policies to support worldwide knowledge sharing and scientific cooperation, breaking all barriers of race, culture, economy, gender, and age. It should aggressively involve new communities, understand their needs, and be flexible in adapting its global strategies to the local cultures.

Higher-level education in computing has been experiencing difficulties in many regions of the world, because it is not attracting enough brilliant young people, and especially women. Computing is often viewed as lacking deep challenging underpinnings. The society at large often has misconceptions about our profession and its roots in science. ACM should take the lead of a pride initiative at all levels, finding new ways to communicate with the society, and especially with the new generations.

ALEXANDER L. WOLF
Professor
Department of Computing
Imperial College London
United Kingdom

 Biography

Alexander Wolf holds a Chair in Computing at Imperial College London, U.K. (2006–present). Prior to that he was a Professor at the Univ. of Lugano, Switzerland (2004–2006), Professor and C.V. Schelke Endowed Chair of Engineering at the Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, U.S. (1992–2006), and Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, U.S. (1988–1992).

Wolf earned his MS (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees from the Univ. of Massachusetts at Amherst, U.S., from which he was presented the Dept. of Computer Science Outstanding Achievement in Research Alumni Award (2010).

With colleagues and students, Wolf works in several areas of experimental and theoretical computer science, including software engineering, distributed systems, networking, and databases (see http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~alw/ for links to his papers). He is best known for seminal contributions to software architecture, software deployment, automated process discovery (the seed of the business intelligence field), distributed publish/subscribe communication, and content-based networking. He has recently begun to investigate fault localization in MANETs and large-scale experiment automation.

Wolf serves as Chair of the ACM SIG Governing Board (SGB) and Chair of the ACM Software Systems Award Committee. He is a member of the ACM Council and ACM Executive Committee. He is also a member of the newly formed ACM Europe Council. Wolf serves on the editorial boards of the Research Highlights section of CACM and of the IEEE journal TSE. Previously, he served as Vice Chair and then Chair of ACM SIGSOFT, a member of the SGB Executive Committee, an SGB representative on the ACM Council, member of the editorial board of ACM TOSEM, and Chair of the ACM TOSEM EiC Search Committee. He has chaired and been a member of numerous international program committees.

Wolf is a Fellow of the ACM, Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, holder of a U.K. Royal Society–Wolfson Research Merit Award, winner of an ACM SIGSOFT Research Impact Award, and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

 Statement

As the public has begun to recognize computing’s central role in supporting and advancing society, we have been reshaping ACM as a key player in supporting and advancing the computing discipline.

In my recent leadership roles I have contributed to these efforts, including formation of regional councils (so far, Europe and India), reconceptualization of regional and student chapters, an initiative to proactively nurture conferences and SIGs in new areas of computing, sponsorship of the new Computer Science Teachers Association, enrichment of the DL, and a revamp of CACM to be more relevant, timely, informative, accessible, and authoritative.

Essential to these and future initiatives is a clear and convincing long-term strategy that draws together the talents of volunteers and staff, supported by sufficient financial resources.

The world financial crisis has been a necessary focus of my term as SGB chair and ACM Council member. Managing financial risk while maintaining the integrity and momentum of the community is a difficult challenge, but one that we have handled extremely well through the joint efforts of the volunteer leaders and headquarters staff.

We must continue to be sensitive to how the crisis will affect different sectors and regions of our community, and the impact on conference planning and regional growth initiatives. Our efforts at securing a significant fund balance in the past have contributed to the fundamental stability of the organization today; we are fortunate to be in a position to absorb much of the pain of the crisis, yet continue to grow and improve the organization’s services.

I have been an ACM volunteer for much of my career. The opportunity to continue contributing by serving as ACM Secretary/Treasurer would be a privilege and an honor.

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Candidates for MEMBERS AT LARGE (7/1/10 – 6/30/14)

VINTON G. CERF
Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist
Google
Reston, VA, USA

 Biography

Vinton G. Cerf has served as VP and chief Internet evangelist for Google since October 2005. He is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced, Internet-based products and services from Google. In the Internet world, he is an active public face for Google. Cerf is the former senior VP of Technology Strategy for MCI and VP of MCI Digital Information Services. Recognized as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the Internet architecture. During his tenure from 1976–1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the ACM A. M. Turing Award in 2004 for their work on the Internet protocols. In November 2005, President Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian award given by the U.S. to its citizens. In April 2008, Cerf and Kahn received the prestigious Japan Prize.

ACM also awarded Cerf’s work the ACM Software System Award and ACM SIGCOMM Award. Cerf served as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2000–2007 and was founding president of the Internet Society from 1992–1995, serving a term as chairman of the Board in 1999. Cerf holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA and is the recipient of over a dozen honorary degrees.

 Statement

I have been a member of ACM since 1967 served as a member of Council in the distant past during which time my primary policy objective was to create the Fellow grade of ACM membership. I also served for four years as chairman of ACM SIGCOMM.

As Member-at-Large, I consider that my primary function will be to convey to Council and ACM leadership the policy views of the general membership. To this end, I will invite open dialog with any and all members of ACM so as to be informed of their views. I offer to do my best to represent these views and also to exercise my best judgment in the setting of ACM policy and assisting the staff in their operational roles.

It seems clear that ACM can and must take increasing advantage of the online environment created by the Internet, World Wide Web, and other applications supported by this global networking infrastructure. This suggests to me that Council and ACM leadership should be looking for ways to assist Chapters and Special Interest Groups to serve as conduits for two-way flows of information, education, training, and expertise. The power and value of ACM membership flows from the contributions and actions of its members.

As a consumer of ACM publications, I am interested in increasing the accessibility and utility of ACM’s online offerings, including options for reducing the cost of access to content in this form. By the same token, I am interested in making the face-to-face events sponsored by ACM and its affiliates useful during and after the events have taken place. The possibility of audio, video, and text transcripts of presentations (perhaps starting with keynotes) seems attractive. If these forms of content can be made searchable, their value may well increase and persist over longer periods of time.

SATOSHI MATSUOKA
Professor of Mathematical and Computing Sciences
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Tokyo, Japan

 Biography

Satoshi Matsuoka received his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Tokyo. After being a Research Associate and Lecturer for the university’s Information Science and Information Engineering, departments, he became an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Mathematical and CS. Five years later, he became a professor at the Global Scientific Information and Computing Center (GSIC) of Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech)—ranked 2nd in Japan and 22nd in the world in engineering and IT, according to the Times rankings. Matsuoka leads GSIC’s Research Infrastructure Division overseeing Tokyo Tech’s responsibilities as a national supercomputing center.

He leads Tokyo Tech’s TSUBAME supercomputer effort, named the fastest supercomputer in Asia-Pacific in June 2006 for three consecutive Top500s. He also heads a lab of 25 researchers and graduate students for the university’s Dept. of Mathematical and CS. From 2003–2008 he served as a sub-leader of the Japanese National Research Grid Initiative project—a $100 million national project to create middleware and applications for next-generation Japanese Cyber-Science (Grid) infrastructure. He has published over 200 refereed publications, many in top-tier conferences and journals, and has won several awards including the prestigious JSPS Prize from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science in 2006 from Prince Akishinomiya. He has played key roles in a number of international conferences, including program chair of ACM OOPSLA 2002, and technical paper chair of IEEE/ACM Supercomputing 09, the latter drawing over 10,000 attendees worldwide.

He has also held various key positions in academic societies, including secretariat of ACM Japan Chapter. His research interests focus on software issues in peta/exaflop supercomputers and clouds.

 Statement

Computing is now playing unprecedentedly dominant roles in advancement of our society, and in solving some of the key challenges that mankind faces today, such as global warming and pandemic outbreaks. However, another recent poll showed that many non-IT researchers considered IT to be a diminishing research area, to be rather stagnant in the next 20 years. I had been involved in various large ACM conferences, academic societies, as well as many national projects especially in supercomputing/e-Science where multiple IT technologies needed to be harnessed, as well as being extremely interdisciplinary in its relationship to other disciplines—based on such experience, I propose to focus my initial role as an at-large council member to be the following: (1) to elevate the status of ACM conferences to be acknowledged amongst all academic disciplines as a top-rate publication, and (2) to establish an improved framework in tightening relationship of ACM with sister information societies and related academic archival activities outside of the United States, particularly in Asia Pacific. The former will be a key to enhance the prestige of IT research in academia, and will be achieved by setting and publicizing more streamlined standards in the conference review process. The latter will be demonstrable in collaboration with Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) as well as other Asian societies, along with involving Japan’s National Institute of Informatics that owns one of the world’s largest pan-discipline academic publication databases. Hopefully such activities will foster better recognition of our field as an indispensable and ongoing research discipline during the 21st century.

SALIL VADHAN
Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Director, Center for Research on Computation and Society School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA, USA

 Biography

Salil Vadhan is the Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and Director of the Center for Research on Computation and Society at the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Vadhan received an A.B. summa cum laude in Mathematics and Computer Science from Harvard College in 1995, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics with distinction from Cambridge University in 1996, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT in 1999. He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT and the Institute for Advanced Study before joining the Harvard faculty in 2001. He has also been a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2003–2004) and a Miller Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley (2007–2008).

Vadhan’s research interests in theoretical computer science include computational complexity, cryptography, and randomness in computation. His Ph.D. dissertation on zero-knowledge proofs received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2000, and his work on expander graphs received the ACM-SIGACT/EATCS Gödel Prize in 2009. He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), an ONR Young Investigator Award (2004), a Sloan Research Fellowship (2002), an NSF Early Career Development Award (2002), and a Phi Beta Kappa Award for Excellence in Teaching (2004).

Vadhan’s service to ACM includes the ACM-SIGACT Committee for the Advancement of Theoretical Computer Science (since 2007), the program committee of the 39th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2007) and chairing the program committee of STOC 2011. Beyond ACM, he has served on numerous other conference program committees, editorial boards, and grant review panels.

 Statement

As Member-at-Large, I will work to ensure that ACM’s policies and organization continue to support the mission of the academic and research communities to advance and disseminate our scientific understanding of computing. Two issues in which I am particularly interested are:

• Conveying the importance of long-term, fundamental research in computing to the public and the government. From my service on the ACM-SIGACT Committee for the Advancement of Theoretical Computer Science, I have experience in such efforts and have seen the positive impact that they can have.
• Enabling the widest possible dissemination of scholarly research. I would like to see ACM seriously consider how it can support and join the movement toward open-access publishing models, which are being embraced by universities (such as Harvard) and the research community.

From my work with Harvard’s Center for Research on Computation and Society, I will also bring an appreciation for the social and legal dimensions of computing research, particularly with respect to privacy and security.

FEI-YUE WANG
Research Scientist and Director of the Key Lab of Complex Systems and Intelligence Science at Chinese Academy of Sciences
Professor and Dean of the School of Software Engineering
Xi’an Jiaotong University
Beijing, China

 Biography

Fei-Yue Wang received his Ph.D. in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York in 1990. He joined the University of Arizona in 1990 and became a Professor and Director of Robotics Lab and Program in Advanced Research for Complex Systems. In 1999, he founded the Intelligent Control and Systems Engineering Center at Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) under the support of Outstanding Oversea Chinese Talents Program. Since 2002, he is the Director of Key Lab of Complex Systems and Intelligence Science at CAS. Currently, he is the Dean of School of Software Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, and Vice President of Institute of Automation, CAS.

His major research interests include social computing, Web science, and intelligent control.

From 1995–2000, Wang was the Editor-in-Chief of Int’l J. of Intelligent Control and Systems and Series in Intelligent Control and Intelligent Automation. Currently, he is the EiC of IEEE Intelligent Systems and IEEE Trans on ITS. He has served as Chair of more than 20 IEEE, ACM, INFORMS conferences. He was the President of IEEE ITS Society from 2005–2007, Chinese Association for Science and Technology in 2005, American Zhu Kezhen Education Foundation from 2007–2008.

From 2006–2008, Wang was the Founding President of the ACM Beijing Chapter. Currently he is an ACM Council Member-at-Large and Vice President and Secretary-General of the Chinese Association of Automation.

Wang is member of Sigma Xi and an elected Fellow of IEEE, INCOSE, IFAC, ASME, and AAAS. In 2007, he received the National Prize in Natural Sciences of China and was recognized as an ACM Distinguished Scientist.

 Statement

This year marks a special equilibrium in my life. By the end of 2010, I will have spent exactly the same number of years living and working in China and the US. This valuable experience offers me a unique perspective to understand and appreciate the similarity and differences between the East and the West, especially in issues related to academic exchanges, the promotion and advancement of science and technology. If elected, my focus would be to broaden the membership base, the scope, the reach, and the impact of ACM in Eastern Asia. In particular, I will do my best to help ACM in its process of creating the ACM China Council to recognize and support Chinese ACM members and ACM activities in China.

After the establishment of ACM Europe and India Councils in 2009 and 2010 respectively, an ACM China Council should be an imperative and important step. China, with its sheer numbers of students, engineers, researchers, and educators in computing professionals, will provide a huge opportunity for ACM’s future development. However, as I had advocated at the ACM Council Meeting last October, we should try our best to get computing professionals inside China to be involved in the process of creating the ACM China Council and avoid the impression of imposing an ACM organization from outside. I will work hard to help ACM recruit new members in China and assist them to organize more local chapters, student chapters, and SIG chapters before launching the ACM China Council. I believe this approach is critical for a solid foundation and healthy growth of ACM in China and extremely helpful to the long term benefit of ACM.

Finally, social computing is the current focus of my research interest and I will make a significant effort to promote this emerging and important interdisciplinary field within ACM.

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