CRA-E Board Members
Susanne Hambrusch
CRA-E Co-Chair
Professor, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University
Susanne Hambrusch’s research interests are in query and data management in mobile environments, computer science education, and design and analysis of algorithms. Susanne served as the Department Head at Purdue from 2002 to 2007. She serves on the board of directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA) and has served on the board of the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W). From 2010 to 2013, Susanne served as the Director of the Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) Division in the CISE Directorate at NSF. She successfully led the development of several new crosscutting programs and she worked tirelessly to increase the number of Graduate Research Fellowships for students pursuing CISE disciplines.
Lori Pollock
CRA-E Co-Chair
Professor of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware
Lori Pollock earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh in 1986 and 1983, respectively, and her B.S. in Computer Science and Economics at Allegheny College in 1981. Her research currently focuses on program analysis for building better software maintenance tools, optimizing compilers for modern computer architectures, and software testing.
Dr. Pollock has actively worked for improving the participation of women and other underrepresented groups in computer science for many years. She was awarded the University of Delaware’s E. A. Trabant Award for Women’s Equity in 2004 and serves on the board of the Computing Research Association’s Committee on Widening Participation in Computing (CRA-WP).
Christine Alvarado
Associate Teaching Professor and Vice Chair for Undergraduate Affairs in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego
Christine Alvarado is an Associate Teaching Professor and Vice Chair for Undergraduate Affairs in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego. Her current efforts are focused on designing curriculum and programs to make computing and computing education more accessible and appealing, with the specific goal of increasing the number of women and underrepresented minorities who study computing. Dr. Alvarado received her undergraduate degree in computer science from Dartmouth in 1998, and Masters and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from MIT in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
Nancy Amato
Head of the Department of Computer Science and an Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Nancy M. Amato was previously a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University where she co-directed the Parasol Lab and chaired the university-level Alliance for Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Systems Biology.
Monica Anderson
Andrew Bernat
Executive Director, CRA
Andrew Bernat was a founding member and chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at El Paso (spending 20 years there), NSF Program Director and is currently the Executive Director of the Computing Research Association. In 1997, he received CRA’s A. Nico Habermann Award. He has some 65 publications and (pre-CRA) over $5,000,000 in external funding.
Geoffrey Herman
Teaching Assistant Professor and Research Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Geoffrey L. Herman is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on how students learn engineering and computing concepts and studying processes for creating systemic change in how engineering and computer science are taught in college settings.
Michael Hilton
Associate Teaching Professor, Institute for Software Research, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Michael Hilton is an Associate Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He completed his Ph.D. at Oregon State University in 2017. However, he is perhaps most proud of his Associates of Science Degree from Grossmont Community College. He primarily teaches software engineering courses. One of his favorite courses he created is Software Engineering for Startups. His research focuses on Continuous Integration and Flaky Test detection.
Amy Ko
Professor, The Information School and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle
Amy J. Ko studies equitable ways for humanity to learn the power and perils of computing, whether youth discovering the limits of machine learning, adults grasping a new API, or teachers shaping learners’ conceptions of code. Her work spans over 100 peer-reviewed publications, 11 receiving best paper awards and 4 receiving most influential paper awards. She received her Ph.D. at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, and degrees in Computer Science and Psychology with Honors from Oregon State University in 2002.
Ran Libeskind-Hadas
Professor and Department Chair, Department of Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College
Ran Libeskind-Hadas is a professor of computer science and department chair at Harvey Mudd College. His research interests are in the area of algorithms, optical networking, and computational biology. He also works in the development of innovative undergraduate curricula in computer science.
Libeskind-Hadas received the A.B. in applied mathematics from Harvard University and the M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Denys Poshyvanyk
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, William and Mary
Denys Poshyvanyk is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at William and Mary where he leads SEMERU research group since 2008. He received his Ph.D. degree from Wayne State University.
His current research is in the area of software engineering, evolution and maintenance. His papers received multiple awards at software engineering conferences such as ICSE, FSE, ASE and ICSME.
Kelly Shaw
Associate Professor of Computer Science, Williams College
Kelly Shaw is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Williams College. Her research area is computer architecture, particularly parallel architectures including graphics processors and shared memory multiprocessors. Her work analyzes the demands of emerging application domains and also designs new features and techniques to exploit application specific characteristics. Dr. Shaw earned an undergraduate degree in computer science from Duke University and earned a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.
The CRA-E Graduate Fellows
Ian Ludden
CRA-E Graduate Fellow
Ian is a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign advised by Sheldon Jacobson. He earned his B.S. in Computer Engineering and Mathematics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in November 2016 and worked as a software engineer developing healthcare integration tools before starting graduate school. His research interests include algorithmic game theory, graph theory, and optimization, and his current projects apply these fields to political redistricting. On the side, he mentors undergraduate research projects developing predictive models for the NCAA March Madness men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. He has served as a teaching assistant for six semesters, primarily for CS Theory courses, and was granted the privilege of teaching his own section of discrete mathematics in summer 2020.
Jean Salac
CRA-E Graduate Fellow
Jean is a computer science Ph.D. student and NSF Graduate Fellow at the University of Chicago working with Professor Diana Franklin. She earned her M.S. from UChicago in 2020 and her B.S. from the University of Virginia in 2017, both in computer science. Her research interests include computer science education and human-computer interaction. Her doctoral research focuses on identifying barriers young children face when learning how to program and developing strategies to overcome such barriers. Her work has been presented at the Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), International Computing Education Conference (ICER), Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (SIGCHI), and Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, and has also earned an honorable mention for Best Paper at CHI.