The Computing Research Association-Industry Committee (CRA-I) is happy to announce the start of a new group of CRA-I visionary leaders charged with propelling the committee forward. This new Council of individuals will work closely with the Steering Committee to identify future committee directions, connect with the community, and achieve the goals of CRA-I. 

CRA-I welcomes the following five new Council members, nominated by colleagues in the computing research community:

Ron Brachman, Cornell Tech

Ron Brachman is the Director of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in New York City and a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Ron received his B.S.E.E. from Princeton University, and S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. Before coming to Cornell Tech, Ron had an outstanding career in research and research leadership at world-leading institutions like Bell Labs; AT&T Labs; DARPA, where he served as Director of the Information Processing Technology Office; and Yahoo Labs, where he served as Yahoo’s Chief Scientist and head of Yahoo Labs. At these institutions he was responsible for recruiting world-class research teams and creating and leading innovative research and academic relationship programs, including the program at DARPA that led to Siri. Ron has served as President of AAAI and Secretary-Treasurer of IJCAI, Inc., and served on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association. He has published extensively in AI over the years, including a textbook on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning and a recent book on Common Sense in AI (both co-written with Hector Levesque). He is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, AAAI, and AAAS.

Elizabeth Bruce, Microsoft

Ms. Elizabeth Bruce is University Relations Director at Microsoft focusing on Microsoft’s strategic relationships with key universities and facilitating collaboration across business units. Elizabeth provides direction on partnerships and investments in new collaborations. Prior to Microsoft, Elizabeth spent over a decade at MIT leading research initiatives and developing strategic partnerships with industry in data science, big data, privacy, cloud computing, biomedical, and telecommunications. Elizabeth served as Executive Director at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and co-founded the MIT Big Data Initiative at the Computer Science and AI Lab (CSAIL). She holds a Joint Program Master’s degree from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Ocean Engineering and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington. Elizabeth currently serves on the Board of AnswerALS and is a member of the U.S. National Committee for CODATA (Committee on Data of the International Science Council).

Hank Korth, Lehigh University 

Henry F. (Hank) Korth is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering with a courtesy appointment in the Data and Technology Analytics Department at Lehigh University.  He is a member of the Scalable Software Systems Research Group and directs the Blockchain Lab in the Center for Financial Services. Prior to joining Lehigh, he was director of Database Principles Research at Bell Labs, a vice president of Panasonic Technologies, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and a research staff member at IBM Research. Korth is a fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE and a winner of the 10-Year Award at the VLDB Conference.  He received the Bell Labs President’s Silver Award for the QTM™ aggregation engine and for the DataBlitz™ main-memory storage manager.  His numerous research publications span a wide range of aspects of database systems, including transaction management in parallel and distributed systems, real-time systems, query processing, and the influence on these areas by modern computing architectures.  Most recently, his research has addressed a variety of issues in blockchain systems and applications, including acceleration of zero-knowledge proofs on parallel architectures, benchmarking, central-bank digital currencies, and private yet provable accounting systems.  Details of his current work are online at blockchain.cse.lehigh.edu.

Eve Schooler, formerly Intel

Eve M. Schooler is a recognized expert in Networking and Distributed Systems. Her current work focuses on evolving the Internet toward a Sustainable edge-cloud infrastructure and Carbon-aware networking. After 18 years, she recently left Intel to embark on new adventures and to pursue an academic sabbatical in Sustainable Computing. At Intel, she was a Principal Engineer and Director, responsible for setting technical direction for Emerging Internet of Things (IoT) networks, standards and innovation. Prior to Intel, she held positions at AT&T Labs-Research, USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), Apollo Computers, and Pollere. Throughout her career, Dr. Schooler has served in leadership positions in various international standards bodies, including the IETF and NIST. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association in the US, the EU’s SPATIAL H2020 Project, and on the Advisory council of the University of Delaware’s Computing and Information Sciences department. She holds a BS from Yale, MS from UCLA, and PhD from Caltech, all in Computer Science. She has published extensively and is an inventor on over 35 patents. She is an IEEE Fellow and the co-recipient of the IEEE Internet Award for her work on control protocols for Internet telephony and multimedia teleconferencing.

Tammy Toscos, Parkview Health

Tammy Toscos is the founder (2014) and Director of the Health Services and Informatics Research lab at Parkview Health, a large not-for-profit health system serving Northeast Indiana and Northwest Ohio. At the Parkview Mirro Center for Research and Innovation, she leads an embedded interdisciplinary scientific team focused on supporting the health system with translational research at the intersection of human computer interaction, computing, and health services research. Dr. Toscos holds a BS in Nutrition & Dietetics from Indiana University, an MS in Applied Computer Science from Purdue University, a PhD in Informatics from Indiana University, and completed a Postdoctoral Health Services Research Fellowship at the Regenstrief Institute. Dr. Toscos has held academic appointments in computer science, nursing and health informatics. Her research has been acknowledged with several awards and funded by AHRQ, PCORI, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and several industry partners.

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