ViCe PResiDeNt (7/1/12 – 6/30/14)

ALEXANDER L. WOLF
Professor
department of computing
imperial college london, U.k.

Biography

Alexander Wolf holds a Chair in Computing at Imperial College London, U.K. (2006–present). Prior to that he was a Professor at the Univ. of Lugano, Switzerland (2004- 2006), Professor and C.V. Schelke Endowed Chair of Engineering at the Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, U. S. (1992–2006), and Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, US (1988–1992).

Wolf earned his MS (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees from the Univ. of Massachusetts at Amherst, from which he was presented the Dept. of Computer Science Outstanding Achievement in Research Alumni Award (2010).

He works in several areas of experimental and theoretical computer science, including software engineering, distributed systems, networking, and databases (see http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~alw/ for links to his papers). He is best known for seminal contributions to software architecture, software deployment, automated process discovery (the seed of the business intelligence field), distributed publish/subscribe communication, and content-based networking.

Wolf currently serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the ACM. He is a member of the ACM Council and ACM Executive Committee. He is also a member of the ACM Europe Council. He serves on the editorial board of the Research Highlights section of CACM. Previously, he served as Chair of the ACM SIG Governing Board (2008–2010) and Chair of the ACM Software System Award Committee (2009–2011). He served as Vice Chair (1997–2001) and then Chair (2001–2005) of ACM SIGSOFT, Chair of the ACM TOSEM EiC Search Committee (2006), a member of the SGB Executive Committee (2003–2005), and an SGB representative on the ACM Council (2005–2008). He was a member of the editorial boards of ACM TOSEM and IEEE TSE, and has chaired and been a member of numerous international program committees.

He is a Fellow of the ACM, Fellow of the IEEE, Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, holder of a U. K. Royal Society–Wolfson Research Merit Award, winner of two ACM SIGSOF T Research Impact Awards, and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

statement

I have been an active member of ACM for much of my career. Over these 25+ years, computing has become central to advancing society. As a volunteer I have tried to help shape ACM into a similarly central role in advancing the educators, practitioners, researchers, and students at the core of computing. In my recent leadership roles I have contributed to important outreach efforts, including formation of regional councils (so far, Europe, India, and China), formation of SIGs in new areas of computing (so far Bioinformatics, Health Informatics, and High Performance Computing), enrichment of the Digital Library, and a revamp of CACM to be more relevant, informative, and authoritative. There are many ways to measure the impact of these efforts, but a simple one is the growth of ACM into the world’s largest computing association.

Essential to these and future initiatives is a clear and convincing long-term strategy that draws together the talents of volunteers and staff, supported by sufficient financial resources. Indeed, the world financial crisis has been a necessary focus of my term as Secretary- Treasurer. Managing financial risk while maintaining the integrity and momentum of the community is a difficult challenge. The crisis has hit different sectors and regions at different times and degrees. For example, the peak effect on academia has lagged that of industry, and Europe and Asia that of North America. This will continue to impact conference planning and regional growth initiatives (e.g., in South America). Nonetheless, our efforts at securing a significant fund balance have contributed to the fundamental stability of the organization, such that we can absorb much of the pain of the crisis and yet still grow ACM’s offerings and services.

As an ACM leader, I am regularly asked where the value lies in being a member, a question you may ask yourself each time you renew. Some obvious benefits are CACM, discounted registration fees, and access to professional development materials. But beyond that, most important to me is a less tangible benefit: the opportunity to publicly endorse the activities of an organization whose standards of excellence and commitment to advancing professionalism, scholarship, and innovation are unsurpassed in the computing community. The opportunity to serve as Vice President of such an organization is a privilege and an honor.