New Officers Elected to Lead World’s Largest Computing Association
Incoming Leaders Set Goal of Broadening Base to Sustain ACM's Unique Impact
NEW YORK, NY, June 4, 2018 – ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has announced the election of new officers who will lead the organization for a two-year term from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2020. Heading the new team will be incoming President Cherri M. Pancake. Pancake is Professor Emeritus at Oregon State University and Director of the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering (NASCE), an interdisciplinary research center known for software systems that analyze large-scale scientific data. Joining Pancake as Vice President is Elizabeth Churchill, an expert in human-computer interaction who serves as Director of User Experience at Google. Rounding out the new slate of officers as Secretary/Treasurer is Yannis Ionnidis. Ionnidis is the President and General Director of the “Athena” Research and Innovation Center in Athens, Greece and a Professor of Informatics and Telecom at the University of Athens.
In addition, the Members-at-Large elected are Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Campinas, Brazil and Theo Schlossnagle, Founder and CEO of Circonus, an analytics and monitoring company based in Fulton, Maryland. As Members-at-Large, Bauzer Medeiros and Schlossnagle will serve four-year terms from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2022.
President-elect Pancake said her key priorities include building bridges between those working in diverse areas of the field, and attracting new groups. “ACM is uniquely positioned to be the ’glue‘ that joins emerging practitioner communities with classical computer scientists,” said Pancake.“I believe ACM must proactively engage new groups, providing conference and publication opportunities that will foster advances across the field. We also must attract new people from diverse backgrounds, not just to meet the growing demand for computing professionals but also to enrich the ideas and processes used in computing research.”
Pancake is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE. She started her career as an ethnographer conducting fieldwork in Guatemalan communities, where she applied cross-cultural techniques to study social change. After earning a PhD in Computer Engineering, she leveraged her ethnographic expertise to address problems in computing. A member of ACM since 1982, she has served the association in a wide variety of roles. Presently, she is ACM Vice President, and was previously Awards Co-chair, an elected member of the ACM Council and area editor for Communications of the ACM.
Elizabeth Churchill, incoming ACM Vice President, would like to see the association deepen its efforts in a number of areas including expanding initiatives to cultivate young leaders and broadening ACM’s global outreach. “ACM membership currently skews toward mid- to late-stage professionals,” says Churchill. “Initiatives focused on early career support, such as the Future of Computing Academy (FCA) established in 2017 will provide a solid foundation for growth and relevance for many years to come. At the same time, ACM needs to put a greater focus on relevant initiatives, programs and promotions in the global arena to ensure that ACM is known worldwide as ‘the association for computing professionals,’ not just the American one.”
Churchill earned a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Cambridge (UK) Her field of study is Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience, with a current focus on the design of effective designer and developer tools. She has more than 50 patents granted or pending, and has authored or co-authored seven academic books and over 100 publications in theoretical and applied psychology, cognitive science, human-computer interaction and related disciplines. Churchill is presently Secretary/Treasurer of the ACM and served on the Executive Committee of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) for eight years, among other leadership roles with ACM.
Newly-elected ACM Secretary/Treasurer Yannis Ioannidis believes that ACM must continue to expand its role as a champion of computer science education around the world. “It is very important that ACM strengthen its role in computing education at all levels globally, starting with very young kids,” said Ioannidis in his candidate’s statement. “But to do this we will have to provide a better platform for those in the early stages of their careers.”
Ioannidis was named an ACM Fellow for contributions to database systems, particularly query optimization. An ACM member since 1983, he currently serves on the ACM Europe Council, the SIG Governing Board Executive Committee and the ACM Publications Board.
About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
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