Communications of the ACM

KLEINBERG RECEIVES ACM DATA MINING AWARD

Tisch University professor of computer science Jon Kleinberg received the 2013 ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award at the 19th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

Kleinberg’s work on
social and information
networks includes the hubs
and authorities algorithm for
computing importance scores of
nodes in a graph (an important
part of Google’s ranking of
search results), methods for
predicting the occurrence of
new links in networks, and an
algorithm for maximizing the
spread of influence through a
social network.

Kleinberg received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2005 and the Nevanlinna Prize (the premier distinction in computational mathematics) in 2006. He also has received an NSF CAREER Award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a Packard Foundation Fellowship, and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship.

IEEE AWARDS JACOBS

2013 MEDAL OF HONOR

The Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
recently honored Qualcomm co-
founder Irwin Jacobs, 79, with
its 2013 Medal of Honor, the
organization’s highest award.

The award is given to an
individual “for an exceptional
contribution or an extraordinary
career in the IEEE fields of
interest.” Jacobs was selected
to receive the award “for
leadership and fundamental
contributions to digital
communications and wireless
technology.”
IEEE chief executive Peter
Staecker said Jacobs was awarded
the medal not just for his
innovations—he holds 14 wireless
industry patents—but for “the
ability to translate innovation into
industry applications time after
time after time.”
Jacobs co-founded
Qualcomm in 1985. He helped
lead revolutionary developments
such as Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA) technology, and
was instrumental in Qualcomm’s
development of satellite
communications and tracking
for the trucking industry.

An IEEE Life Fellow, former chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences American Association for the Advancement of Science, Jacobs’ received the U.S. National Medal of Technology in 1994 and the inaugural IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Hall of Fame Award in 2009.

Milestones

Computer Science Awards

want to appoint. Judges are not appointed for life terms, as U.S. Supreme Court Justices are, and given the more complex selection and appointment process involving a disparate group of EU members, it would stand to reason that these judges and advocates generals are more likely to be current on a greater variety of technologies.

Meanwhile, Japan took the novel step of establishing an Intellectual Property High Court in April 2005 to deal with patent and intellectual property cases. The interesting aspect of this court is its use of judicial research officials and technical advisors, full-time court officials who assist judges by conducting research on technical matters necessary for hearing and resolving IP cases.

Judge Posner has suggested a similar approach to handle highly technical cases at the Supreme Court, which would involve hiring an ad hoc impartial expert agreed upon by both parties in a case to advise the justices about the technology in the case. However, Posner says the likelihood of this occurring is slim, given that the Supreme Court justices are unlikely to agree to any system which puts a focus on the technology, and likely will seek the safe harbor of focusing their decisions based on prior legal rulings and principles.

“As Supreme Court justices, I’m sure
rather because they are not confident
that they can predict the future of tech-
nology and the development of social
norms that will surround its use,” ac-
cording to Papandrea. “Furthermore,
the Court is generally hesitant to revisit
its prior decisions and preexisting doc-
trinal framework and often chooses to
issue more narrow decisions to avoid
the difficult jurisprudential questions
new technology can present.”
Meanwhile, technology cases are
being addressed in the high courts
around the world. The European
Union’s highest court, the European
Court of Justice, has issued rulings that
barred embryonic stem cell patents,
struck down a requirement of social
networks to install an anti-piracy filter-
ing system, and is currently address-
ing a case involving the legal sale of
products that can modify Nintendo
consoles, which could allow users to
bypass certain copyright protections.

The EU’s Court of Justice has not
been subject to as much scrutiny as
the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps due
to how the court is structured, with
one judge per EU country, assisted by
nine ‘advocates-general’ whose job
is to present opinions on the cases
brought before the Court. Each judge
and advocate-general is appointed
for a term of six years, which can be
renewed, and the governments of EU
countries must agree on whom they
they’re very conscious of the impor-
tance of their being respected,” Posner
says. “How does the Court maintain its
prestige? It makes them risk-averse.
They don’t want to grapple with some
technical case and make some terrible
mistake; they want, consciously or un-
consciously, to operate on a level at
which their decisions will be seen as
applications of legal principles and le-
gal reasoning, rather than as solutions
to technological issues.”