secRetaRY/tReasuReR
(7/1/10 – 6/30/12)
alexander l. Wolf
Professor
department of computing
imperial college london
united kingdom
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, NJ,
U. S. (1988–1992).
Wolf earned his MS (1982) and
Ph.D. (1985) degrees from the Univ.
of Massachusetts at Amherst, U.S.,
from which he was presented the
Dept. of Computer Science Outstanding Achievement in Research
Alumni Award (2010).
With colleagues and students,
Wolf 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 pub-lish/subscribe communication, and
content-based networking. He has
recently begun to investigate fault
localization in MANE Ts and large-scale experiment automation.
Wolf serves as Chair of the ACM
SIG Governing Board (SGB) and
Chair of the ACM Software Systems
Award Committee. He is a member of the ACM Council and ACM
Executive Committee. He is also a
member of the newly formed ACM
Europe Council. Wolf serves on the
editorial boards of the Research
Highlights section of CACM and of
the IEEE journal TSE. Previously,
he served as Vice Chair and then
Chair of ACM SIGSOFT, a member
of the SGB Executive Committee,
an SGB representative on the ACM
Council, member of the editorial
board of ACM TOSEM, and Chair of
the ACM TOSEM EiC Search Committee. He has chaired and been
a member of numerous international program committees.
Wolf is a Fellow of the ACM, Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, holder of a U.K. Royal
Society–Wolfson Research Merit
Award, winner of an ACM SIGSOFT
Research Impact Award, and is an
ACM Distinguished Speaker.
statement
As the public has begun to recognize computing’s central role in
supporting and advancing society,
we have been reshaping ACM as
a key player in supporting and
advancing the computing discipline.
In my recent leadership roles I
have contributed to these efforts,
including formation of regional
councils (so far, Europe and India),
reconceptualization of regional
and student chapters, an initiative to proactively nurture conferences and SIGs in new areas of
computing, sponsorship of the
new Computer Science Teachers
Association, enrichment of the DL,
and a revamp of CACM to be more
relevant, timely, informative, accessible, and authoritative.
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.
The world financial crisis has
been a necessary focus of my term
as SGB chair and ACM Council
member. Managing financial risk
while maintaining the integrity
and momentum of the community
is a difficult challenge, but one
that we have handled extremely
well through the joint efforts of the
volunteer leaders and headquarters staff.
We must continue to be sensitive to how the crisis will affect
different sectors and regions of
our community, and the impact on
conference planning and regional
growth initiatives. Our efforts at
securing a significant fund balance
in the past have contributed to the
fundamental stability of the organization today; we are fortunate to
be in a position to absorb much of
the pain of the crisis, yet continue
to grow and improve the organization’s services.
I have been an ACM volunteer for
much of my career. The opportunity
to continue contributing by serving
as ACM Secretary/Treasurer would
be a privilege and an honor.
