People of ACM - Bulletin Archive

Rachid Guerraoui is a Professor in the School of Computer and Communications Sciences at EPFL. He is recognized as one of the leading figures in distributed computing, an area of research that aims to make multiple computers work together to solve a common problem. His innovations address the fundamental theory and practice of distributed computing, including problems such as agreement and reliable information dissemination. In his interview, he discusses the importance of BFT protocols, robustness and developing trustworthy models, his efforts to improve computer science education in Africa, and more.

Susanne Bødker is a Professor at Aarhus University (Denmark). Her research interests include human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work, and participatory design, and 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. In her interview, she discusses activity theory and its origins, her Common Interactive Objects project, the importance of participatory design, and more.

 Tim Menzies is a Professor at North Carolina State University. His interests include artificial intelligence, intelligent agents, data sciences, analytics, as well as software engineering and programming languages. One of his goals is to develop computer systems that make the best decisions possible with the least amount of data. In his interview, he discusses how automated software engineering is evolving, the relationship between AI and computer programming, reproducible software engineering research, and more.

Amey Dharwadker is a Machine Learning Engineering Manager at Meta, leading the Facebook Video Recommendations Quality Ranking team. He oversees the development of video ranking models that enhance content quality and personalization for over two billion users daily. Previously, Dharwadker advanced user engagement and revenue growth across Meta’s platforms through his work on Facebook’s News Feed and Ads Ranking systems. In his interview, he discusses recommender systems for videos, modeling complex user-content interactions through advanced neural network architectures, the VideoRecsys workshop, and more.

Nicola Dell is an Associate Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University. Her research investigates the impact of digital technologies on underserved communities and builds systems and interventions that make our computing-mediated world safer and more equitable for everyone. In her interview, she discusses empowering people to solve problems in real-world settings, her work with the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, easing the challenges home health aides face, and more.

Ian F. Akyildiz served as the Ken Byers Chair Professor in Telecommunications at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology for 35 years before retiring in 2020. Since 1989, he has also been the President and CTO of Truva Inc., a company dedicated to conducting research and teaching classes in the telecommunications field. In his interview, he discusses the benefits of nanonetworks, the integration of 5G and 6G technology with the Metaverse, the goals of the Technology Innovation Institute, and more.

Abhik Roychoudhury is Provost’s Chair Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS). His interests include software testing and analysis, and more generally trustworthy software systems. Roychoudhury’s research group has also made significant contributions to fuzzing and symbolic execution, and their usage in software testing/automatic programming. In this area, his group has been honored with various awards including an ICSE Most Influential Paper Award (10 Year Test-of-Time Award) for automated program repair. In his interview, he discusses automated program repair methods, researching fuzzing and software security, the Three "I"s of Research, and more.

Heloisa Caroline de Souza Pereira Candello is a research scientist at the Responsible & Inclusive Group at the IBM Research laboratory in São Paulo, Brazil. She applies her expertise in user research and user experience design to create engaging and ethical AI interactive systems, especially conversational interfaces. One of her primary interests has been in applying design methods to uncover how people use multimedia features in their mobile devices in cultural heritage settings. In her interview, she discusses user experience fostering ethical AI systems, recent changes in chatbots, how cultural heritage impacts the use of multimedia features, and more.

Jonathan Crowcroft is the Marconi Professor of Communications Systems in the Computer Lab at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, and the Chair of the Program Committee at the Alan Turing Institute. He is credited with fundamental contributions to rural broadband, helping extend the Internet to multimedia, and founding the field of opportunistic networking. In his interview, he discusses Internet bandwidth challenges, data vulnerabilities in the cloud, his work with the ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law, and more.

Xin Luna Dong is Principal Research Scientist at Meta Reality Labs, where she is leading the machine learning efforts to build an intelligent personal assistant. Developing an intelligent personal assistant includes work in contextual AI, multimodal conversation, search, and question answering, as well as recommendation and personalization. Her research interests include databases, data mining, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning. In her interview, she discusses knowledge graphs and applications, virtual assistants for wearable devices, personal information management and personalization, and more.

Virginia Dignum is a Professor at Umea University focusing on Responsible Artificial Intelligence and Director of the university’s AI Policy Lab in Umeå, Sweden. Her research focuses on complex interactions and interdependencies between people, organizations, and technology. Dignum’s publications include the book, Responsible Artificial Intelligence. In her interview, she discusses what led to a career in responsible artificial intelligence, the use of a social contract between an autonomous agent and its societal role, her vision for ACM's Technology Policy Council, and more.

Yuki Koyama is a Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. His research interests include computer graphics and human-computer interaction. He is especially interested in supporting designers by using computational techniques such as mathematical optimization. In addition to his role at AIST, he also works at Graphinica, a Japanese animation studio. In his interview, he discusses his interest computer graphics and HCI, fostering advances with mathematical optimization, developing tools to support and enhance the creative process, and more.

Luciano Baresi is a Professor at Politecnico di Milano. He has published papers in a variety of topics in software engineering. Earlier in his career, he worked in formal approaches for modeling and specification languages, Unified Modeling Language (UML), and the design of web applications. Currently, he is interested in distributed systems, service-based applications, and the different aspects of mobile, self-adaptive, and pervasive software systems. In his interview, he discusses the constraints of cloud infrastructure, the need for software engineering to keep pace with mobile computing, why ACM PACMSE is needed, and more.

Meenakshi D’ Souza is a Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Bangalore, India. Her research interests include formal methods, software testing, model-based development, and automata theory, as well as design and architectures for embedded software. She was elected President of the ACM India Council for a term that runs from July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2026. In her interview, she discusses working towards gender diversity in computing, improving software estimation models, her goals as President of the ACM India Council, and more.

Odest Chadwicke “Chad” Jenkins is a Professor of Robotics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He directs the Laboratory for Progress (Perceptive Robotics and Grounded Reasoning Systems), where he aims to discover methods for computational reasoning and perception that will enable robots to effectively assist people in common human environments. In his interview, Jenkins discusses his path to becoming a roboticist, humanoid robotics and its impact on society, his time as EiC for ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, and more.

Ramón Cáceres is a computer science researcher and software engineer who most recently built large-scale privacy infrastructure at Google. Earlier in his career, he held positions at Bell Labs, IBM Research, and AT&T Labs. His areas of focus have included systems and networks, mobile and edge computing, mobility modeling, security, and privacy. In his interview, Cáceres discusses working on Google's global authorization system Zanzibar, receiving the 2022 ACM SIGMOBILE Test of Time Award, the union of mobile computing, artificial intelligence, and privacy preservation, widening participation in computing, and more.

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. She has been active with ACM’s education initiatives for decades. In her interview, Hawthorne discusses what sparked her interest in cybersecurity, the role of community colleges in computing education, the significance of AI in CS2023, her work on Rendering History: The Women of ACM-W, and more.

Nivedita Arora is Breed Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Northwestern University. Her research aims to transform everyday materials to have computational capabilities, yet operate by harvesting energy from the environment and be responsibly composted or recycled. Arora received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation which demonstrated wireless and batteryless sensor nodes using novel materials and radio backscatter. In her interview, Arora discusses sustainable computational materials, innovation in batteryless devices, changing societal perceptions of technology, and more.

Fedor V. Fomin is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bergen. Within the broad discipline of theoretical computer science, his research interests include graph algorithms, parameterized complexity, algorithmic fairness, algorithmic foundations of machine learning, and combinatorial games. He was recently named an ACM Fellow for contributions to the development of parameterized complexity and exact exponential algorithms. In his interview, Fomin discusses receiving the Nerode Prize, bidimensional problems, the algorithmic foundations of machine learning, and more.