2024 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships
Ke Fan of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Daniel Nichols of the University of Maryland are the recipients of the 2024 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships.
The fellowships honor exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus is high-performance computing (HPC) applications, networking, storage or large-scale data analytics.
Fan is recognised for her research in three key areas of high-performance computing: optimising the performance of MPI collectives, enhancing the performance of irregular parallel I/O operations and improving the scalability of performance introspection frameworks. Nichols is recognised for advancements in machine-learning based performance modeling and the advancement of large language models for HPC and scientific codes.
ACM Journals Boast Strong Impact Factors
ACM publications have once again made an impressive showing in the newest Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from Clarivate Analytics.
Standout journal ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) continued its impressive ascent, receiving an impact factor of 23.8, up from 16.6 the year before, and placing it first out of the 143 journals in the Computer Science, Theory & Methods category.
Flagship journal Communications of the ACM (CACM) boasted continued strong performance with an impact factor of 11.1, placing it first in the Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture category for the second year in a row; third of 131 titles in the Computer Science, Software Engineering category; and sixth of 143 journals in the Computer Science, Theory & Methods category.
ACM Director of Publications Scott Delman said, “We are thrilled by these latest figures, which we see as strong validation of ACM’s industry-leading path to sustainable and responsible Open Access. This strong performance demonstrates that our authors are already starting to reap the benefits of universal access to their work, through increased citations, visibility, and impact on the research community and beyond.”
ACM ByteCast: Xavier Leroy
In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Harald Störrle hosts ACM Fellow and Software System Award recipient Xavier Leroy, Professor at Collège de France and member of the Académie des Sciences.
Best known for his role as a primary developer of the OCaml programming language, Xavier is an internationally recognised expert on functional programming languages and compilers, focusing on their reliability and security, and with a strong interest in formal methods, formal proofs and certified compilation.
He is the lead developer of CompCert, the first industrial strength optimising compiler with a mechanically checked proof of correctness, with applications to real-world settings as critical as Airbus aircraft.
Here, Xavier shares the evolution of Ocaml, which grew out of Caml, an early ML (Meta Language) variant, talks about his interest in formal verification, whose adoption in the software industry is still low due to high costs and the need for mathematical specifications, discusses AI tools like Copilot and the current limitations of AI-generated code in software engineering, and much more.
Featured ACM Member: Nivedita Arora
Nivedita Arora is Breed Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Northwestern University.
Her research aims to transform everyday materials like paper, wood, soil, plants, and textiles into computational devices that can harvest energy from the environment to perform useful tasks and be composted or recycled after use.
She calls this new area of computing “sustainable computational materials.” She envisions it supporting applications towards combating climate change and supporting agriculture, smart infrastructure, wildlife monitoring and education.
Arora received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation “Sustainable Interactive Wireless Stickers: From Materials to Devices to Applications”, which demonstrated wireless and batteryless sensor nodes using novel materials and radio backscatter.
In her interview, Arora discusses sustainable computational materials, the greatest challenge in developing her PhD Dissertation project, the future of batteryless devices, changing societal perceptions of technology, and more.
Featured ACM Member: Elizabeth K. Hawthorne
Elizabeth K. “Beth” Hawthorne is a Full Professor and Graduate Program Director of Cybersecurity at Northeastern University’s Arlington, Virginia campus.
Previously, she spent 26 years at Union College in Cranford, New Jersey—retiring as Senior Professor Emerita of Computer Science and Cybersecurity. Soon afterwards, Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey invited her to develop, teach and direct their online graduate degree program in cybersecurity, along with developing an inclusive, post-baccalaureate cybersecurity bridge program for those interested in a career change.
Her research interests include digital forensics, AI in cybersecurity, software security and privacy, computer science education and model curricula.
In her interview, Hawthorne discusses what sparked her interest in cybersecurity, the role of community colleges in undergraduate computing education, the significant prominence of AI in CS2023 curricular guidelines, the key role professional societies play in the quality and direction of cybersecurity education programs, her participation in the book Rendering History: The Women of ACM-W, and more.
