In recognition of pioneering research “that will sustain competitiveness in the digital age,” UCSB faculty members Divyakant Agrawal and Linda Petzold have been named Fellows of the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery.
The distinguished professors are among 46 computer scientists from universities, corporations and research laboratories to be honored by the world’s largest education and computing society.
ACM President Alain Chesnais described the 2011 Fellows as “international luminaries” responsible for technological advances and solutions that are transforming society for the better in industry, commerce, health care, entertainment and education.
“ACM Fellow is one of the highest honors for a computer scientist,” said Subhash Suri, professor and chair of UCSB’s Computer Science Department. “We are extremely proud to count professors Agrawal and Petzold among our colleagues. Their contributions to the field and to the reputation of the department are greatly appreciated.”
The ACM Fellows program celebrates the exceptional contributions of renowned members of the computing field that have helped to enlighten researchers, developers, practitioners and end-users of information technology. The new UCSB fellows join a stellar group of colleagues to whom the society and its members look for guidance and leadership in computing and information technology. With this recent selection, six UCSB faculty members are now ACM Fellows.
Agrawal, a professor of computer science, was recognized for his contributions to distributed data management systems. His areas of expertise include cloud computing, scalable architectures, distributed algorithms, digital libraries and multimedia data. He holds several patents and is the author of more than 300 research articles in the area of databases and distributed systems.
For his dedication to teaching, Agrawal has been named an Outstanding Graduate Mentor by the UCSB Academic Senate.
Petzold, a professor of mechanical engineering and of computer science, was cited for her achievements in computational science. Her research focuses on modeling, simulation and analysis of multiscale systems in systems biology and engineering. She is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The ACM delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. It provides the computing field’s premier digital library and serves its members and the computing profession with publications, conferences and career resources.