Professor Wendy Hall elected as ACM President

Professor Wendy Hall has been elected as President of the Association for Computing Machinery, the first person from outside North America to hold this position in the ACM’s prestigious 60-year history.

In an announcement made today (3 June) from the ACM’s headquarters in the United States, Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, said her goal as president is to help ACM reach its full potential by expanding international initiatives and increasing gender diversity in all aspects of computing.

The ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, with over 90,000 members around the world, representing business and the professions, education, and research and development.

As a Past-President of the British Computer Society (2003-2004), and a researcher with many international connections, Professor Hall expressed her commitment to guiding ACM toward more initiatives in India and China. She also indicated her interest in rethinking the society’s relationship with Europe, and exploring relevant opportunities in South America and other parts of the world.

Her current research includes applications of the Semantic Web and exploring the interface between the life sciences and the physical sciences. She is a Founding Director, along with Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Daniel J. Weitzner, of the Web Science Research Initiative, which was launched in 2006 as a long-term research collaboration between the University of Southampton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Hall is a member of the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology and a founding member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council. An active member of the Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web (SIGWEB) as well as the Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM), she chaired WWW2006, the World Wide Web conference, which was co-sponsored by ACM. She previously served as ACM Vice-President.

She is currently Senior Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, where she is also a Fellow. Her other honours include Fellow of the British Computer Society and of the UK’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, and the Anita Borg Award for Technical Leadership 2006 from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. She was awarded a CBE in 2000.

Professor Hall is the first person from outside North America to serve as ACM President in the association’s 60-year history. A full list of election results for the ACM includes the new Vice-President Alain Chesnais and the new Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Ryder.