Carla Brodley Appointed Dean of the College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University

 North­eastern Uni­ver­sity has appointed Dr. Carla E. Brodley as dean of the Col­lege of Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence, effec­tive Aug. 1, 2014.

Brodley comes to North­eastern from Tufts Uni­ver­sity, where she is cur­rently pro­fessor of com­puter sci­ence with a sec­ondary appoint­ment in the Clin­ical and Trans­la­tional Sci­ence Insti­tute of the Tufts Med­ical Center. From 2010 through 2013 she chaired the Depart­ment of Com­puter Sci­ence at Tufts.

She is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized researcher in machine learning and knowl­edge dis­covery in data­bases who has applied her exper­tise to prob­lems in per­son­al­ized and evidence-based med­i­cine, med­ical imaging, neu­ro­science, remote sensing, and com­puter secu­rity. Her research has been funded by a wide range of fed­eral agen­cies, cor­po­ra­tions and foun­da­tions, among them the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, the National Insti­tutes of Health, NASA, DARPA,IBM, and the Mul­tiple Scle­rosis Society.

“A leader in com­puting research, Dr. Brodley’s achieve­ments have con­tributed greatly to the advance­ment of the changing field of com­puter sci­ence,” said Stephen W. Director, provost and senior vice pres­i­dent for aca­d­emic affairs. “An accom­plished leader and scholar, she will take Northeastern’s lead­er­ship in com­puter sci­ence to the next level-both within and beyond CCIS.”

Brodley serves on the boards of the Inter­na­tional Machine Learning Society and DARPA’s Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence and Tech­nology Board. Among her many pro­fes­sional recog­ni­tions, she has received an NSF CAREER Award and mem­ber­ships to the Defense Sci­ence Study Group of DARPA and the AAAI Exec­u­tive Council.

“North­eastern is a uni­ver­sity on the move and I am thrilled to be joining as the next dean of the Col­lege of Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence,” Brodley said. “In today’s infor­ma­tion driven age it is more impor­tant than ever to inte­grate com­puting and infor­ma­tion sci­ence into every aca­d­emic field. I look for­ward to working with fac­ulty, staff, and stu­dents to build upon the great momentum that has already made CCIS one of the nation’s most exciting inter­dis­ci­pli­nary colleges.”

She is also a member of the edi­to­rial boards of Machine Learning, Journal of Machine Learning Research, and Data Mining and Knowl­edge Dis­covery. She is co-chairing the 2014 con­fer­ence of the Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and from 2008–2011 co-chaired the Com­mittee on the Status of Women in Com­puting Research.

Brodley was awarded the bachelor’s degree in math­e­matics and com­puter sci­ence from McGill Uni­ver­sity in 1985 and earned her doc­torate in com­puter sci­ence from the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts at Amherst in 1994. Prior to joining Tufts, she was on the elec­trical and com­puter engi­neering fac­ulty at Purdue Uni­ver­sity, where she was hon­ored with the Ruth and Joel Spira Out­standing Teacher award in 1998. In 2010, the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts rec­og­nized Brodley with the Alumni award for Out­standing Educator.

In an email to the fac­ulty of CCIS, Director thanked Larry Finkel­stein for his out­standing con­tri­bu­tions as dean of the col­lege for 12 years. “Larry’s ded­i­ca­tion to the col­lege and to the uni­ver­sity, in addi­tion to his strong lead­er­ship throughout his tenure as dean, has been key in helping the col­lege achieve the level of excel­lence it enjoys today,” he wrote.