Published: March 2018, Issue: Vol. 30/No. 3, Download as PDF

Archive of articles published in the March 2018, Vol. 30/No.3 issue.

Board-MeetingBoard-Meeting

2018 Board Election Results and New Appointed Board Members


CRA members have elected five new members to its board of directors: James Allan, Maria Ebling, Ayanna Howard, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, and Rachel Pottinger. Current board members Michael Franklin, Stephanie Forrest, Kathryn McKinley, Greg Morrisett, and Vivek Sarkar were re-elected to the CRA board.

There have also been changes to the appointed members to the board, who are not elected. Charles Isbell has been appointed the new AAAI representative, replacing Lise Getoor, and Kate Larson has been appointed the Info-CAN/CS-CAN representative, replacing Mario Nacimento. Beginning July 1, Mark Hill will replace Elizabeth Mynatt as the CCC Chair and representative on the board.

CRA would like to thank all retiring board members for contributions during their service on the board.

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Juan E. Gilbert and Manuel Pérez Quiñones Receive the 2018 A. Nico Habermann Award


This year, the CRA board of directors selected two recipients of the 2018 A. Nico Habermann Award: Juan E. Gilbert of the University of Florida and Manuel A. Pérez Quiñones of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Both individuals are being recognized for their contributions aimed at increasing the number and success of members of underrepresented groups in the computing research community. Gilbert has had an incredible impact on diversifying the field of computer science, especially on increasing the number of African-American Ph.D. recipients and faculty members in all of the institutions in which he has worked. Pérez Quiñones has tirelessly and passionately worked throughout his career for diversity and inclusion in computing at all levels, spanning from high school to Ph.D., especially for Latino/as.

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Paul Messina Receives 2018 CRA Distinguished Service Award


Paul Messina was selected as the 2018 recipient of the CRA Distinguished Service Award for his significant contributions to the advancement of high performance computing and decades of service to the field. Messina has an incredible record of building and managing large-scale, diverse research activities. Over the course of his career, he has designed, directed, and otherwise executed numerous initiatives that have influenced U.S. policy and programs resulting in the U.S. leadership position in high-performance computing.

Farnam-JahanianFarnam-Jahanian

CRA Board Member Farnam Jahanian Named President of Carnegie Mellon University


CRA Board Member Farnam Jahanian has been named President of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). From 2011 to 2014, Jahanian served as Assistant Director (AD) for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2015, he was elected to the CRA Board of Directors and also received the CRA Distinguished Service Award. Jahanian is currently the chair of the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.

Highlights of the 2018 CRA Computing Leadership Summit


On Monday, February 26, in Arlington, VA, the CRA hosted its annual Computing Research Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX Association) and the CSTB.

President’s Budget Request a Mixed Bag for Science, but it Could Have Been Much Worse


What a difference a budget deal makes…

The President’s budget request for FY 2019, released yesterday, includes some modest gains and some big losses for Federal science agencies — details below, but on the whole a rather mixed bag for those who believe in the importance of the Federal investment in fundamental research. But it could have been much worse.

Women in ComputingWomen in Computing

Expanding the Pipeline: ACM-W Programs Expand to Support Students and Professional Women in Computing


Supporting, celebrating, and advocating for women in computing is the mission that lies at the heart of the activities of ACM-W.  Our longstanding projects of scholarships, celebrations, and student chapters provide opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to increase their technical knowledge while networking and building community. Recently we have begun to expand our activity to include projects that support populations of women in computing beyond students.  This article provides an overview of all of our projects, old and new.

Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Josep Torrellas


As Stanford professor John Hennessy once said, “[P]arallelism and ease of use of truly parallel computers … [is] a problem that’s as hard as any that computer science has faced.” As my Ph.D. advisor, Hennessy instilled in me a desire to conquer this problem, and I have been working at it for the last 30 years. Specifically, my research focuses on parallel computer architecture, with an emphasis on shared-memory organizations and their software layers.