Carlo Ghezzi
Chair of Software Engineering
Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy

BIOGRAPHY

Carlo Ghezzi is a Professor and Chair of Software Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy.  He is the Rector’s Delegate for research, past member of the Academic Senate and of the Board of Governors.  He has been Department Chair and Head of the PhD Program.  He held temporary positions at University of California at Los Angeles, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Padova, ESLAI-Buenos Aires, University of California at Santa Barbara, Technical University of Vienna, University of Klagenfurt, University of Lugano.

Ghezzi is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and a member of the Italian Academy of Sciences.  He was awarded the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award.  He has been a member of the ACM Nominating Committee, and is presently a member of the committee for the ACM Software System Award.  He has been on the evaluation board of several international research projects and institutions in Europe, Japan, and the USA.

Ghezzi is a regular member of the program committee of important conferences in the software engineering field, such as the ICSE and ESEC/FSE for which he also served as Program and General Chair.  In 2006 he was General Co-Chair of the International Conference on Service Oriented Computing. 

Ghezzi has been the Editor in Chief of the ACM Trans. on Software Engineering and Methodology (from 2001 till 2006) and an Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering.  He is currently an Associate Editor of Science of Computer Programming, Service Oriented Computing and Applications, and Software Process Improvement and Practice.

Ghezzi’s research has been focusing on software engineering and programming languages.  He co-authored over 150 papers and 8 books.  He coordinated several national and international (EU funded) research projects.

STATEMENT

ACM is the leading professional society in the field of computing.  For over 60 years, it has been serving the scientific community:  researchers, educators, engineers, and professional developers.  The history of the field can be traced back through the history of the ACM.  This history documents how our society has been shaped through continuous innovations.  The ACM will continue to assist us in the future advances in hardware, software, networks, and devices, which will make computing ubiquitous and pervasive.

New problems, however, are also emerging and some older problems are still with us.  The ACM should play a proactive role to help us facing and solving them.

A lot remains to be done to spread computing science and education in all parts of the world.  By its very nature, computing is at the heart of technology that connects the world.  It should by no means become the source of deeper divisions and discriminations.  The ACM should elaborate policies to support worldwide knowledge sharing and scientific cooperation, breaking all barriers of race, culture, economy, gender, and age.

University education also has problems, particularly in North America and Europe, because it is not attracting enough brilliant young people, and females are a small minority.  They often view computing as uninspiring hacking, lacking deep challenging underpinnings.  The society at large often has misconceptions, both about our profession and about its roots in science.  We must find ways to better communicate.  And we must focus our education on long-lasting principles, more than on the mundane and transient surface of technology.  The ACM should take the lead of a pride initiative at all levels, finding new ways to communicate with the society, and especially with the new generations.