ACM President

Alain Chesnais
Founder
Visual Transitions
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Alain Chesnais is President of ACM, elected for the two-year term beginning July 1, 2010.

Chesnais studied at l’Ecole Normale Supérieure de l’Enseignement Technique and l’Université de Paris where he earned a Maîtrise de Mathematiques, a Maitrise de Structure Mathématique de l’Informatique, and a Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies in Compuer Science. He was a high school student at the United Nations International School in New York, where, along with preparing his International Baccalaureate with a focus on Math, Physics and Chemistry, he also studied Mandarin Chinese.

Chesnais recently founded Visual Transitions, which specializes in helping companies move to HTML 5, the newest standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. He was the CTO of SceneCaster.com from June 2007 until April 2010, and was Vice President of Product Development at Tucows Inc. from July 2005 – May 2007. He also served as director of engineering at Alias|Wavefront on the team that received an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for developing the Maya 3D software package.

Prior to his election as ACM president, Chesnais was vice president from July 2008 – June 2010 as well as secretary/treasurer from July 2006 – June 2008. He also served as president of ACM SIGGRAPH from July 2002 – June 2005 and as SIG Governing Board Chair from July 2000 – June 2002.

As a French citizen now residing in Canada, he has more than 20 years of management experience in the software industry. He joined the local SIGGRAPH Chapter in Paris some 20 years ago as a volunteer and has continued his involvement with ACM in a variety of leadership capacities since then.

ACM Vice President

Barbara G. Ryder
Head, Department of Computer Science
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, VA

Barbara Ryder was elected Vice President for the two-year term beginning July 1, 2010.

Ryder received an A.B. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University in 1969; an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1971; and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rutgers University in 1982. She was an Associate Member of Professional Staff at AT&T Bell Labs from 1971-76. An assistant professor at Rutgers University from 1982-88, she was named associate professor from 1988-94; professor from 1994-2001; and professor II from 2001-08. She became the Head of the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech in 2008, the first woman to serve in that role at the nationally ranked College of Engineering.

Ryder is the recipient of a 2008 ACM Presidential Award, and was named an ACM Fellow in 1998. She served as the Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women's Distinguished Professor in 2004, and received ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award in 2001. She also was voted Professor of the Year for Excellence in Teaching by the Rutgers Computer Science Graduate Student Society in 2003. She received a Leader in Diversity Award at Rutgers in 2006, and a Graduate Teaching Award from Rutgers Graduate School in 2007.

Ryder was Secretary-Treasurer of ACM from July 2008 to June 2010. A member of ACM Council from 2000-2008, she was chair of the Federated Computing Research Conference 2003, and of ACM SIGPLAN from 1995-1997. She also served on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (1998-2001) and on the Editorial Boards of IEEE's Transactions on Software Engineering, ACM TOPLAS, and Software, Practice and Experience.

Ryder has also served on many program and conference committees, especially those sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN and SIGSOFT. She has been a panelist in the CRA Workshops on Academic Careers for Women, and the New Software Engineering Faculty Symposia held at the International Conference on Software Engineering.

ACM Secretary-Treasurer
Alexander L. Wolf
Professor
Department of Computing
Imperial College London
United Kingdom

Alexander Wolf was elected Secretary-Treasurer of ACM for the two-year term beginning July 1, 2010.

Wolf holds a Chair in Computing at Imperial College London, UK. He was a professor at the University of Lugano, Switzerland from 2004-2006, and professor and C.V. Schelke Endowed Chair of Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1992-2006. He was also a Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs from 1988-1992.

Wolf earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was presented with the Outstanding Achievement in Research Alumni Award in 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 publish/subscribe communications, and content-based networking.

A member of the ACM Council and ACM Executive Committee, he also chairs the ACM Software System Award Committee and is a member of the newly formed ACM Europe Council. He serves on the editorial board of the Research Highlights section of Communications of the ACM. Previously, he served as vice chair and chair of ACM SIGSOFT, chair of the ACM SIG Governing Board (SGB), and SGB representative on the ACM Council. He is a former editorial board member of the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) and the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and chaired the ACM TOSEM Editor-in-Chief Search Committee. He has chaired and been a member of numerous international program committees.

A Fellow of ACM, Wolf is a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society and holder of a U.K. Royal Society–Wolfson Research Merit Award. He was a recipient of the 2008 ACM SIGSOFT Research Impact Award and is a member of the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program.

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).