ACM Names International Computing Visionaries for Advances in Research and Education

acm
The Association for Computing Machinery
Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession

Contact: Virginia Gold
212-626-0505
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NEW YORK, April 18, 2013 – ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) today honored the achievements of computer scientists who have elevated the vital role of computing in driving technological innovation around the world.   These leaders set the stage for advances in computing that have influenced the practitioners, researchers, educators and policymakers across international boundaries who create and implement technology for the digital age.  Mateo Valero of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center steered initiatives in Europe that advanced high-performance computing.  Zvi Kedem of New York University led the transformation of ACM’s search index infrastructure that supports the world’s computing research community.  Fabrizio Gagliardi of Microsoft Research helped ACM build relationships with Europe’s computing institutions to raise global awareness of its resources.  Yunhao Liu of Tsinghua University in China guided efforts to bring ACM’s professional and educational resources to China’s massive computing community.  PJ Narayanan of the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad aided ACM in improving the quality of computing education and research in India.

The following awards will be presented at the ACM Awards Banquet on June 15 in San Francisco:

Distinguished Service Award to Mateo Valero for spearheading initiatives in Europe that advanced high-performance computing research and education.  Valero made a strategic case for major funding initiatives at the regional, national and European Union (EU) levels.  He is a founder of HiPEAC, a European Network of Excellence that directs high-performance and embedded computing systems for its members and partners, and expands science research and academic-industry cooperation.  He also created and directed the European Center for Parallelism of Barcelona (CEPBA); was a director of C4, the Catalan Center for Computation and Communications; and led the CEPBA-IBM Research Institute, created to conduct research on parallel computers.  He is a founding member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering, and Correspondant Academic of the Spanish Royal Academy of Science and the Mexican Academy of Sciences. A member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Doctors and the Academia Europaea, he holds Honorary Doctor degrees from the Universities of Chalmers and Belgrade, and from the Universities Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Zaragoza, and Complutense of Madrid in Spain, and the University of Veracruz in Mexico.  For his research in computer architecture, Valero received the Eckert-Mauchly Award from ACM and IEEE Computer Society, and the Harry Goode Award from IEEE CS.  He is director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.  A graduate of Polytechnic University of Catalonia, he is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE.

Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award  to Zvi Kedem for his leadership in rebuilding the ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) as a modern cognitive map of the computing field for the worldwide computing community.  As editor-in-chief, Kedem managed the effort to revise and automate the key component that underlies the ACM Digital Library’s search index infrastructure.  With his recruited team of domain experts, he managed a year-long effort to develop a set of computing concepts that enable discovery of both topic-specific works and people with subject-specific expertise. The project's results are reflected throughout the ACM DL, and are seen in ACM’s institutional profiles, conference and journal views, and Special Interest Group descriptions.  With more than 50 scientific publications, Kedem has pursued research in Computer Graphics, Database Systems, Data Mining, Parallel and Distributed Computing, and Computing Theory.  He has also served on funding and review panels, program committees of scientific meetings, and editorial boards of scientific journals.  He is a professor and past chair of the Computer Science Department at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and a Fellow of ACM and IEEE.

ACM Presidential Awards recognize three leaders who are extending ACM’s profile and promoting its role in advancing computing as a science and a profession around the globe. They are:
Fabrizio Gagliardi, Microsoft Research.  As the chair of ACM Europe Council, he sharpened ACM’s visibility and its professional and educational activities throughout Europe.  His leadership has helped to grow ACM European chapters, membership, and conferences.  He successfully built integral relationships with Informatics-Europe and the European Union to further raise global awareness of ACM initiatives.  He also played a leading role in creating the first Heidelberg Laureate Forum, a collaborative initiative between the computing and math disciplines to bring young researchers together with winners of the highest scientific awards, including the ACM Turing Award.

Yunhao Liu, professor at Tsinghua University.  As an active researcher and a member of the ACM China Council, he has spread the word and shared the value that ACM offers to China’s vast computing community.  As a result of his efforts, ACM membership in China has grown significantly.  ACM is now a co-sponsor of the annual China National Computer Congress, China’s largest event of its kind in the computer field.  The gathering focused on green computing, system software, sensor network, information security, high-performance computing, mobile internet and intelligent terminals.

P J Narayanan, professor and dean at IIIT, Hyderabad.  As president of the ACM India Council, he helped establish an ACM presence in this burgeoning technology mecca.  His efforts were instrumental in launching ACM as a scholarly society and starting several activities under the ACM banner in India.  He facilitated top conferences in the region and encouraged students to pursue careers in computing. Narayanan helped create an ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2012.  Under his guidance, ACM India is creating initiatives to improve the quality of computing education and strengthen the Indian computing research enterprise as a way to bolster the next generation’s technology leaders in India.

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