ACM President

Alexander Wolf

Alexander Wolf is President of ACM, elected for the two-year term beginning July 1, 2014.

Alexander Wolf holds a Chair in Computing at Imperial College London, UK. Previous positions include professor at the University of Lugano, Switzerland, professor and C.V. Schelke Endowed Chair of Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs.

His expertise is in experimental computer science, including software engineering, distributed systems, networking, and databases. He is known for seminal contributions to software architecture, software deployment, automated process discovery (the seed of the business intelligence field), distributed publish/subscribe communication, and content-based networking.

Formerly Vice President of ACM, Wolf is a member of the ACM Council and ACM Executive Committee as well as ACM Europe Council. He previously served as Secretary-Treasurer of ACM and chaired the ACM SIG Governing Board and the ACM Software System Award Committee. He also served as vice chair and chair of ACM SIGSOFT, and was a member of the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Wolf is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE, a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, and holder of a UK Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. He is a recipient of two ACM SIGSOFT Research Impact Awards, and of both the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award and Distinguished Service Award. He is also an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

Wolf holds MS and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and is a recipient of the Computer Science Department’s Outstanding Achievement in Research Alumni Award.

ACM Vice President
Vicki L. Hanson

Vicki L. Hanson was elected Vice President for the two-year term beginning July 1, 2014.

Vicki Hanson is Distinguished Professor of Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology, Professor and Chair of Inclusive Technologies at the University of Dundee’s School of Computing, UK, and IBM Research Staff Member Emeritus. Previously, she was a research staff member and manager at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, research associate at Haskins Laboratories, and postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Her field of study is human-computer interaction, where she specializes in accessibility of technology for people with disabilities and the aging population.

Formerly Secretary-Treasurer of ACM, Hanson chaired the ACM SIG Governing Board and was Vice Chair for Operations and an Executive Committee member. She is Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing and has served as an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on the Web. She also has chaired the Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award Committee, and has served several years as a judge for the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals. A member of the ACM-W Europe Executive Committee as well as an ACM Distinguished Speaker, Hanson has held leadership positions in several ACM conferences including ASSETS, Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), Hypertext, OOPSLA, and Universal Usability.

An ACM Fellow, she also is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society. Hanson was honored with the Anita Borg Women of Vision Award for Social Impact and the ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award. In addition, she received the IBM Corporate Award for Contributions to Accessibility, has won multiple IBM Outstanding Contribution Awards, and was awarded a UK Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

Hanson earned a B.A. degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Oregon. For her work, she received the Alumni Fellows Award in Arts and Sciences from the University of Oregon.

ACM Secretary-Treasurer

Erik Altman

Erik Altman recently moved to the IBM Corporate Technology team after serving for several years as Manager of the Dynamic Optimization Group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where he directed projects on performance tooling and Liquid Metal for heterogeneous systems. Previous positions include hardware and software engineer at Bauer Associates, Machine Vision, and Tek Microsystems.

He is an originator of IBM's DAISY binary translation project, which allowed VLIW architectures to have high performance and achieve 100% binary compatibility with PowerPC. He is also an original architect of the Cell processor chip that is to appear in the forthcoming Sony Playstation 3 game consoles.

Formerly Chair of ACM’s SIG Governing Board, Altman is a Past Chair of ACM SIGMICRO (Special Interest Group on Microarchitecture). He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Micro. He has served as guest editor of IEEE Computer, the Journal of Instruction Level Parallelism (JILP), and the IBM Journal of Research and Development. He has been the program chair of the PACT, CASES, NPC, and P=ac2 (Power/Performance = Architecture x Circuits x Compilers) conferences, as well as general chair of PACT and P=ac2. He has also given a number of keynote addresses and served on numerous program committees.

An author or co-author of more than 30 conference and journal papers, he has 25 patents and pending patent applications. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an S.B. degree, he holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from McGill University.

ACM Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer

John R. White

John R. White has served as ACM Executive Director and Chief Executive Office since January 1999.  As CEO  Dr. White is responsible for working with ACM senior leadership (the officers, the board of directors, and over 1,000 volunteers) in setting and delivering ACM’s strategic direction.  During John’s tenure, ACM membership has grown to an all-time high, its scholarly publishing program has doubled in size, and the Association is increasingly involved in issues related to the image and health of the computing discipline and field worldwide.

Prior to joining ACM, John was Manager of the Computer Science Laboratory at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).  White spent seventeen years at Xerox PARC leading several research groups, including the PARC group that developed and delivered DocuPrint, Xerox’ series of high-end, high-speed networked printing products. As head of the Computer Science Lab, he managed research teams exploring future offerings in networked electronic document systems, services, and commerce.  Prior to his tenure at Xerox PARC, White was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Connecticut.

Dr. White has been a long-time advocate of the ACM, serving as its President from 1990-92, as well as assuming many key ACM volunteer roles over the past two decades.

Dr. White received his Ph.D. in computer science, M.S. in computer science, and B.A. in mathematics, all from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has a number of refereed publications and holds a US patent. He is a Fellow of the ACM, a recipient of the ACM Outstanding Contribution award, as well as a Xerox PARC Excellence in Science and Technology Award. Dr. White has served on the boards of the Computing Research Association, Computing Sciences Accreditation Board, and the Publishers International Linking Association (CrossRef).