memBeRs At LARGe (7/1/12 – 6/30/16)

MARY LOU SOFFA
chair, department of computer Science
and the owen r. cheatham Professor
University of Virginia
charlottesville, Va, USa

P J NARAYANAN
dean (r&d)
iiit hyderabad
hyderabad, india

Biography Mary Lou Soffa is the Chair of the Department of Computer Science and the Owen R. Cheatham Professor of Sciences at the University of Virginia. Prior to Virginia, she was a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and also served as the Graduate Dean in Arts and Sciences. Her general research interests are in programming languages/compil-ers and software engineering. Her current focus is on resource management for multicores, program analysis, virtual execution environments, testing, and debugging.

In 1999, Soffa was selected as an ACM Fellow and received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. She received the SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award in 2003 and SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award in 2010. She received the Nico Habermann Award from the Computer Research Association in 2006. In 2011, she was selected for the Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award.

Soffa has been active in ACM for many years. She currently serves on the Publications Board and is a member-at-large in ACM Council. She was the ACM SIG Board Council Representative from 2000–2002 and served as SIGPLAN Chair, Vice-Chair and Treasurer. She also served as member-at-large on the SIGSOFT executive committee.

She served on the CRA Board for 10 years and currently serves on CRA- W. She has worked to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities for many years. She co-founded the CRA- W Graduate Cohort Program and the CRA- W Cohort for Associate Professors. She has been a member of a number of editorial boards and has served as conference chair, program chair, and program committee member for numerous conferences in both software engineering and programming languages.

statement

Through the more than 20 years that I have been involved with ACM, it has continually evolved, always striving to provide the services needed by it s members as well as welcoming new members, both in the U. S. and internationally. I have been, and continue to be, committed in helping ACM address both new problems that are emerging as well as ongoing challenges.

Interdisciplinary research and development is a growing national trend in science, and it very much involves computing. With this important direction comes challenges that I believe ACM can help address. How do we properly educate students? How do we evaluate it? What type of journals and conferences are needed? These are some questions that we must start to address.

Another challenge that I would like to help address is the troubling lack of interest in computing shown by students. We need to help ongoing projects that are focused on demonstrating the excitement and opportunities that computing offers to them. Our science and profession depends on a robust pipeline of students engaged in computing and we must work toward that end.

An ongoing challenge is the lack of gender and minority diversity in our field in all levels. Although efforts have been ongoing for a number of years, there still remains much to be done. We need to develop new strategies and culture changes to attract diverse students. I look forward to continuing my work in this area with ACM.

Although there are many challenges to address, we must also maintain and enhance what is working right. Much of success of ACM has come from the SIGs, through their volunteers, high-quality journals and conferences and the digital library. We have to continue to ensure that the SIGs have the support and tools that they need to continue their important work.

Biography

P J Narayanan is a Professor and Dean (R&D) at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. His research interests include Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, and Parallel Computing. His Ph.D. thesis dealt with parallel processing for large computer vision problems. At CMU, he developed Virtualized Reality, the first system to capture dynamic action in 3D using 50 cameras. He played a key role in establishing a vibrant research programme at IIIT-H as the first Post-Graduate Coordinator and Dean (R&D). Nvidia recognized him as a CUDA Fellow in 2008 for the pioneering efforts in GPU computing. He has played a key role in making the Indian Conference on Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing (ICVGIP) as a high-quality conference series and in bringing the Asian Conference on Computer Vision to India. He has been an Area Chair or Program Committee member of major conferences in Computer Vision and Computer Graphics as well as IJCAI in 2007. Narayanan has been the Co-Chair of ACM India Council from its inception in 2009. He serves on several committees of DST, MCIT, and CSIR in India, dealing with education and research. education:

B. Tech (1984) in CS from the IIT, Kharagpur; MS (1989) and Ph.D. (1992) in CS from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Work experience

˲ Associate Development Engineer,
Lipi group, CMC R&D (1984–1986)
˲ Teaching and Research Assistant in
University of Maryland (1986–1992)
˲ Research Faculty Member in Ro-
botics Institute of Carnegie Mellon
University (1992–1996)

˲ Scientist D/E and Head of Computer Vision and Virtual Reality group of the Centre for AI & Robotics (CAIR), DRDO, Bangalore (1996–2000)

˲ Faculty member of IIIT, Hyderabad (2000–)

statement

Computing has touched every aspect of human life in a short period. Information is abundant today, resulting in fundamental changes in teaching, research, and how we work. Corporations have a truly global work force and are critically dependent on the information infrastructure. Research too has become increasingly global. Academia will also be required to make its teaching and research global.

Internationalization has already taken ACM to small places in India like Patiala and Anakapalle with its chapters. I have been a part of this as ACM India Co-Chair since its inception. We have already set up an award for the best dissertation from India. I am satisfied with the progress so far in India. I am amazed at the dedication and vision of the ACM Council in expanding the role of ACM everywhere. I think much more can be accomplished with communities from South America, the Middle East, and Africa, apart from India, China, and Europe, if ACM makes itself relevant and useful to them.

ACM can leverage its strengths and expand its services to be more attractive to its members. Broadcasting high-profile events like the Turing A ward lectures, the Turing 100 celebrations, and events from SIGGRAPH, MultiMedia, and Supercomputing, exclusively to its members will make ACM more attractive. In the era of digital connectivity, ACM can have Distinguished Lectures that are delivered digitally. A periodic 2-hour slot with a Turing Award winner or an accomplished person exclusively for ACM chapters can and will be very popular in countries like India, but also to other places. ACM’s DL is already attractive, but can be made more so by expanding its scope to its events and lectures. I would like to explore such ideas as a member of the council. I seek your votes to make this possible.