ACM Recognizes Contributors Who Advanced The Computing Field

ACM RECOGNIZES CONTRIBUTORS WHO ADVANCED THE COMPUTING FIELD

New York, NY - March 29, 2007 - The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today announced the winners of four awards honoring significant contributions and service to the computing and information technology field. These awards recognize dedicated researchers, professors, and students whose creativity and commitment to innovation have changed the way the world works and lives. The recipients will be honored at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 9, 2007 in San Diego, CA.

The following ACM leaders will be honored:

The Outstanding Contribution Award to David S. Wise of Indiana University. Wise chaired the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) and has held the ACM positions of vice president and secretary-treasurer. He led the creation of the Federated Computing Research Conference to facilitate communication among researchers in different computer science and engineering fields. Wise helped advance the usability and content of ACM's world-renowned Digital Library by creating its subscription and copyright policy, and advocating for early inclusion of newsletters and conference proceedings from ACM's Special Interest Groups. An ACM Fellow since 2004, he is currently a member of ACM Council as well as several other executive committees.
The Distinguished Service Award to Susan Graham of the University of California, Berkeley. Graham has demonstrated extensive service to the computing community, both nationally and abroad. In the U.S., she was a member of the first President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), whose report resulted in a significant increase in federal research funding for IT. She has also served on committees of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council and the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science. In addition, Graham is a Fellow of ACM and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Internationally, she served on the Panel for International Review of UK Computer Science Research, and co-chaired the Japan - U.S. Forum on the Future of Supercomputing.
The Doctoral Dissertation Award to Ren Ng of Stanford University. He was named for his study of Digital Light Field Photography, an image-based technique applied to a scientific imaging instrument for recording scene appearance. Unlike conventional photography, light fields of radiance permit manipulation of viewpoint and focus after the image is captured, and offer improvements to current scientific microscopy, security surveillance and sports and commercial photography. Honorable Mention went to Aseem Agrawala of the University of Washington for his study, Authoring Effective Depictions of Reality combining multiple samples of the plenoptic function (the computational model for most image-based techniques). His research builds on the recent digitization of photography and video to improve the processes by which light is mapped into a depiction. The Doctoral Dissertation Award, which carries a prize of $5,000, is presented annually to the author of the best doctoral dissertation in computer science and engineering. Financial support and the publication of the winning dissertation are provided by Springer-Verlag.
The Athena Lecturer Award to Karen Spärck Jones of Cambridge University, UK. Spärck Jones has worked in automatic language and information retrieval research since the late fifties. Her work, which enables communications with computers in everyday "natural" language, has provided insights that are fundamental to today's search engines. The Athena Lecturer Award, given by the ACM Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W), recognizes women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. As part of this recognition, Spärck Jones has been invited to address the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) conference, July 23-27, 2007, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery http://www.acm.org, is an educational and scientific society uniting the world's computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.