This article is published in the April 2019 issue.

Announcements


CRA Board Member Charles Isbell Named Dean of College of Computing at Georgia Tech

CRA Board Member Charles Isbell has been named the next dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, effective July 1. Isbell serves as the AAAI representative to the CRA Board.

From the Georgia Tech press release:

“Dr. Isbell has a longstanding track record of teaching and scholarly excellence, leadership, and advocacy in his service to the College of Computing community,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “I very much appreciate his vision for the College and its alignment with the Institute’s vision and goals for education and research. I know that that, together, the students, faculty, and staff, under Dr. Isbell’s leadership, will continue the trajectory of innovation in research and education that characterizes the College of Computing.”

Isbell joined the Georgia Tech faculty as an assistant professor in the College of Computing in 2002, serving in advancing academic, research, and administrative leadership roles. During that time, he has been in the midst of various educational innovation and diversity and inclusion initiatives in the College of Computing, such as the Threads program, the Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS), and the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing. In addition, Isbell has been a champion and supporter, at the Institute level, of many research initiatives and centers led by and originated by his colleagues in the College of Computing.

“I am honored to be selected as the next dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair of the College of Computing as we prepare for the next generation of learners,” Isbell said. “The breadth represented in the field of computing — including information and data science, computer engineering, and others — is central to the future of universities as we face changing student needs, increasing workforce demands, an evolving relationship with industry and the public, the need for new ways of supporting cutting-edge research, and persistent issues of equity and access.”

Isbell’s research interests are varied and include artificial intelligence with particular emphasis on interactive machine learning, including using machine learning to model human behavior. He is a fellow of both the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Click here to read the full release.

 

CCC Council Member Shwetak Patel Receives ACM Prize in Computing

patelThe Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced its 2018 Prize in Computing award to Shwetak Patel, of the University of Washington and Google and a Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member.  The ACM Prize in Computing is their second most prestigious award in all of computing (after the Turing Award – known as the Nobel Prize in Computing). Patel is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Prize in Computing for contributions to creative and practical sensing systems for sustainability and health.  In just a decade, he has had incredible impact in the applications of AI and sensing in two broad areas – developing methods for disaggregating energy and water usage in the home and developing new methods of health sensing and advancing clinical science through the use of commodity sensors.

On the CCC Council, Patel co-leads the Health and Human Computer Interaction Task Force and is currently planning a visioning activity on mental health and addiction.

Click here to view the CCC blog post.