ACM Elects New Officers for 2006-2008 Term.

New Officers Will Expand International Focus on Technology and Innovation

NEW YORK, May 31 /PRNewswire/ -- The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today announced the election of Stuart I. Feldman as president for a two-year term beginning July 1, 2006. Feldman, who is vice president for Computer Science Research at IBM, pledged to expand ACM's influence into the broader information technology fields worldwide. Also elected to two-year terms were Vice President Wendy Hall, professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK, and secretary-treasurer Alain Chesnais, vice president for product development at Tucows Inc. of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The election of ACM officers follows a two-year span of ACM's steady growth and involvement in technology issues that are driving innovation and competitiveness. This term included the release of ACM's Report on Globalization and Offshore Outsourcing of Software, which assessed the rapid changes to global competition that are driven by Information Technology, and identified the keys to continued innovation and invention.

As part of his vision for ACM over his two-year term, Feldman cited the need to expand service to members around the world, including countries with rapidly growing populations of computing professionals. He also noted his interest in increasing ACM's influence on policy makers whose actions affect the broad computing community as well as society at large.

The winner of the 2003 ACM Software System Award for creating a seminal piece of software engineering known as "make," Feldman brings both corporate and academic experience to his role as ACM's highest elected officer. As an active ACM member and current vice president, Feldman helped initiate several programs to serve the career and technical needs of practicing computing professionals, including engineers, architects, IT specialists and managers. He co-founded and sits on the Editorial Board of ACM Queue, an ACM publication which targets gurus, top guns, project heads and thought leaders to whom other programmers and engineers regularly turn for guidance. He also helped drive the effort to direct ACM's role in addressing key computing issues in China and India.

Wendy Hall, ACM's new vice president, has emphasized the need for ACM to develop its international policies, programs and activities during her term. A supporter of initiatives to achieve greater diversity in the computing field, Hall currently chairs the newly formed Women's Forum of the British Computer Society. She is a former BCS president (2003-2004), and was recently appointed to the Scientific Council of the newly formed European Research Council.

Hall's research team developed the well-known Microcosm open hypermedia system, which was patented and spun off into a commercial company. Her current research interests include advanced knowledge technologies, the semantic web, and digital libraries. An active member of the Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web (SIGWEB) as well as the Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM), Hall was chair of WWW2006, the World Wide Web conference, which is co-sponsored by ACM.

Alain Chesnais, ACM's new secretary/treasurer, has targeted the international arena as a key challenge for ACM, and is committed to helping ACM expand its role as an international organization. He has also advocated the expansion of ACM's online presence to better serve the needs of young researchers and practitioners.

Chesnais was ACM SIGGRAPH president from July 2002 - June 2005, and SIG Governing Board Chair from July 2000 - June 2002. A French citizen now residing in Canada, he has more than 20 years of management experience in the software industry. He joined the local SIGGRAPH Chapter in Paris some 20 years ago as a volunteer and has continued his involvement with ACM in a variety of leadership capacities since then.

  Other Officers

  Members-at-Large elected to four-year terms are:
  -- Bruce Maggs, professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University,
     and Vice President, Research, Akamai Technologies, which he helped
     launch.  He advocates greater effort towards serving the development
     community, sound scientific guidance on privacy, security and
     electronic voting issues, and increased investment in computer science
     research.
  -- Kevin Scott, Managing Staff Engineer, Search Quality at Google, and a
     member of the newly formed ACM Professions Board.  His objectives are
     to help ACM focus attention on the K-12 computing community, and
     provide practitioner members with a strong community to support their
     needs as computing professionals.
  -- Jeannette M. Wing, President's Professor of Computer Science at
     Carnegie Mellon University and currently head of the Computer Science
     Department.  Her vision is to improve K-12 math and science education,
     increase the international savvy of undergraduate and graduate
     students, and be vigilant in voicing the need for federal investment in
     long-term science and engineering research.

  About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery http://www.acm.org/, is an educational and scientific society uniting the world's computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

CONTACT: Virginia Gold of Association for Computing Machinery, [phone] or [e-mail]

Web site: http://www.acm.org/