Rachid Guerraoui Receives Inaugural ACM Luiz André Barroso Award
ACM has named Rachid Guerraoui the recipient of the inaugural ACM Luiz André Barroso Award for theoretical and applied contributions to distributed computing and impactful work on promoting computer science in Africa. He has made groundbreaking contributions that have shaped the landscape of distributed computing, provided new insights into managing transactions in concurrent environments, and has provided tools and frameworks for understanding and optimising transaction performance.
Guerraoui is a Professor in the School of Computer and Communications Sciences at EPFL, where he is also Director of the Distributed Computing Laboratory. He was recently featured in a People of ACM interview in which he discusses the importance of BFT protocols, robustness and developing trustworthy models, his efforts to improve computer science education in Africa, and more.
The Luiz André Barroso Award celebrates researchers from communities historically underrepresented in computing from across the world who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. The award carries a cash prize of $40,000 provided by Google.
Jason Cong Receives ACM Chuck Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award
ACM has named Jason Cong, the holder of the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Excellence at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, is the recipient of the 2024 ACM Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award. Cong is recognised for fundamental contributions to the design and automation of field-programmable systems and customizable computing.
During his career in both academia and industry, Cong developed an extraordinary array of tools to automate integrated circuit design, mostly focused on tools for Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are special integrated circuits that can be programmed after they have been manufactured. The ability of FPGAs to change their functionality after manufacturing has made them part of the standard hardware in many applications including data centers, telecommunications, aerospace, defense and automotive engineering.
The ACM Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award recognizes individuals or groups who have made surprising, disruptive, or leapfrog contributions to computing ideas or technologies. The award is accompanied by a $100,000 prize with financial support provided by Microsoft.
Cordelia Schmid Receives ACM Athena Lecturer Award
ACM has named Cordelia Schmid, Research Director at Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology and a Research Scientist at Google, as the 2025-2026 ACM Athena Lecturer. Schmid is recognised for outstanding contributions to computer vision in image retrieval, object recognition and video understanding. Her work has helped computers understand, perceive and interact with the visual world.
Schmid is also recognised for building an active research community. For example, the research groups she founded are world leaders in computer vision and AI. Over the years, she has also edited major journals and chaired the most important conferences in the field. Schmid’s skills in mentorship and supervision are also renowned among her peers.
Initiated in 2006, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. The award includes a $25,000 honorarium provided by Two Sigma.
Featured ACM Member: Susanne Bødker
Susanne Bødker is a Professor at Aarhus University (Denmark). Her research interests include human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work, and participatory design. She is credited with introducing activity theory to human-computer interaction. Bødker was an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) from 2004-2018.
Her honors include being inducted into the CHI Academy, a special recognition bestowed by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) and being the recipient of the SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award, 2024. Recently, Bødker was also selected as an ACM Fellow. Fellows represent one percent of ACM’s global membership and are chosen for their research contributions and service to the field.
In her interview, she discusses activity theory and its origins, her Common Interactive Objects project, the importance of participatory design and more.
ACM TechTalk: Kent Beck
View the recent ACM Techtalk “Empirical Software Design: When & Why” with Software Engineering Pioneer Kent Beck. Since the publication of Parnas’ “On the Criteria to Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules,” there has been good advice on how to design software. However, most software is more difficult to change than it should be and that friction compounds over time.
The Empirical Design Project seeks to resolve the seemingly irresolvable tradeoff between short-term feature progress and long-term optionality, focusing on: How is software actually designed? What can we learn from data about how software is designed? When should software design decisions be made? What is the optimal moment given unclear and changing information and priorities? And how can we enhance the survival of software projects while expanding optionality?
ACM ByteCast: Peter Lee
In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Scott Hanselman welcomes ACM Fellow Peter Lee, President of Microsoft Research. As leader of Microsoft Research, Lee incubates new research-powered products and lines of business in areas such as AI, computing foundations, health, and life sciences.
Lee served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and has testified before both the US House Science and Technology Committee and the US Senate Commerce Committee. He coauthored the bestselling book The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond. In 2024, he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in health and life sciences.
Here, Lee reflects on his 40+ years in computer science from working on PDP-11s and Commodore Amigas to modern AI advancements. He highlights how modern technologies built on decades of research have become indispensable, talks about his healthcare journey including work that earned him election to the National Academy of Medicine, the lack of ethics education in traditional CS curricula, and more.
ACM ByteCast: Mary Lou Jepsen
In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman welcomes Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO and Founder of Openwater, a technical executive and inventor in the fields of display, imaging, and computer hardware with about 300 patents published or issued to her name.
Jepsen has been named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine (“Time 100”), CNN’s top “10 thinkers” in science and technology and has won numerous awards numerous from professional societies in the fields of optics, display, and electronics. She’s a frequent keynote speaker, has given two highly viewed TED talks, and is frequently featured in top global press publications.
Here she discusses her work with Openwater, a startup working on innovative imaging technology using infrared light, ultrasound, and electromagnetics to diagnose and potentially treat diseases, and aims to leapfrog traditional drug development. She talks about the role of patents in manufacturing, the advantages of the company’s open-source model, highlights some of their breakthroughs, future possibilities with open source and more.
