CRA-I Blog

The CRA-I Blog frequently shares news, timely information about the computing research industry community, and items of interest to the general community. Subscribe to blog emails here to stay connected.

CRA-I Co-Chair Ben Zorn Elected as 2023 AAAS Fellow

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This post benefited from contributions by Petruce Jean-Charles, Communications Associate for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently announced its 2023 Fellows! Fellows are elected each year by their peers serving on the Council of AAAS, the organization’s member-run governing body. The honor recognizes diverse accomplishments, including pioneering research, leadership within a given field, teaching and mentoring, fostering collaborations and advancing public understanding of science.

Among the 2023 Fellows is CRA-Industry’s Co-Chair Ben Zorn (Microsoft Research)! Zorn has served as one of the inaugural co-chairs of CRA-I since its inception in 2021, spearheading a number of workshops, roundtables, and working groups to really grow the committee to what it is today.

“My whole career has been fed by that energy and I have been extremely privileged to work first with incredible colleagues at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and for the last 25 years with friends and colleagues at Microsoft,” Zorn said. “Those collaborations have resulted in both academic research and product impact that I am very proud of. Along the way I was again fortunate to become deeply involved in professional service activities at ACM SIGPLAN and with the CRA. It is for both my research and professional service that AAAS chose to recognize me as a Fellow.  It is a lifelong dream to receive such recognition and I give much of the credit for my accomplishments to the people I’ve been so fortunate to work with over the years.”

Other 2023 Fellows include two Computing Community Consortium (CCC) council members Michela Taufer and Holly Yanco. Congratulations to all the Fellows on their significant achievements! To see the full list of Fellows visit the AAAS page.

Register to attend CRA-I’s GenAI for Research and Science Roundtable on May 1st!

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The Computing Research Association-Industry (CRA-I) is hosting a virtual roundtable event on May 1st, from 3-4:30 PM ET, focusing on Generative AI (GenAI) for Research and Science. Please register to attend here.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is at the forefront of technological advancement and has the potential to transform and accelerate research across diverse fields. The goal of this roundtable is to discuss examples of new frontiers of GenAI in both academia and industry, consider the impact on scientific discovery and the R&D community, and discuss how to ensure responsible use and development. The roundtable will look at use cases from various fields such as biomedical, energy, and materials science. The aim is to inspire and enlighten the broad research community, while emphasizing the importance of caution to ensure that advancements benefit everyone.

Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of this transformative conversation! Please register to attend here.

Theo Drane (Intel) Joins CRA-Industry Council

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CRA-Industry (CRA-I) is delighted to announce that Theo Drane (Intel) has joined the CRA-I Council. He joins a growing list of Council members, led by CRA-I Council Chair Divesh Srivastava (AT&T), that will continue to work closely with the CRA-I Steering Committee to identify future committee directions, connect with the community, and achieve the goals of CRA-I.

“Theo is a passionate advocate for joint academic/industrial PhDs, and we look forward to Theo helping CRA-I build strong bridges between computing research in industry and academia,” said Srivastava. 

Dr. Theo Drane is a Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation where he founded and runs the Numerical Hardware and System Level Design Group within Intel Graphics. He worked for the Datapath consultancy, Arithmatica, after completing a Mathematics degree from the University of Cambridge. Moving to Imagination Technologies, he founded their Datapath team while studying for a PhD at Imperial College London’s Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department. After a stint within Cadence Design System’s Logic Synthesis division, Genus, he joined Intel’s 3D Compute and Graphics division. His Intel team is an applied research group acting as an internal consultancy working within the division and Intel at large. The group focuses on all aspects of architecting, implementing, optimizing and formally verifying math intensive hardware and system level design in general. The group offers and promotes ‘Acadustrial’ PhDs – simultaneous full time industrial employment and PhD enrollment; driving knowledge creation and transfer. Dr. Drane has served as Program co-Chair for IEEE International Symposium on Computer Arithmetic.

Please help the industry research community by continuing to nominate outstanding colleagues for the CRA-I Council. Read more here and send nominations to industryinfo@cra.org.

Welcome, Theo!