William Gropp for IEEE-CS President 2020 Election

Support William Gropp for IEEE Computer Society President-Elect for 2021!

Why you should vote in the Computer Society Elections

The elections select the leadership of your society. This includes the Board of Governors as well as the leadership (two vice presidents and a president).

The IEEE-CS Board of Governors represents the membership of the IEEE Computer Society. It is important that this board represent all of the membership of the Computer Society and that it be not just knowlegable about the technical issues in computing but about the strategic issues facing professional societies today in their publications, support for conferences, and other services to members. The role of the Board of Governors is described in Article III of the Computer Society Bylaws.

The role of the executive committee membership (including the president, president-elect, and vice presidents) is described in Article V of the Computer Society Bylaws. The president has a 3 year term—1 year each as president-elect, president, and past-president.

How to Vote

You should have received email from with voting instructions from noreply@votenet.com. If not (e.g., because it went to your Spam folder), you can vote at https://eballot4.votenet.com/IEEE. Polls close at 21:00 UTC (5PM EDT) on Monday, September 21, 2020. If you have any questions about the voting process, you can email ieee-computervote@ieee.org .

Note that the IEEE Computer Society is part of IEEE, and that IEEE elections for president are also taking place. Make sure you are voting for me in the IEEE Computer Society election.

Why you should vote for me

The Computer Society is a great organization with tremendous potential, but it is also struggling with the challenges of a rapidly changing field, especially in terms of how we network and share with each other. The pandemic has added new challenges, making it more difficult to interact face-to-face, while also giving us a crash course in working remotely and using the technologies that our field has developed to stay in touch with each other. In my service with the Computer Society, both as general chair of the largest conference, as a member of the board of governors, and for the last year as the Vice President for Technical and Conference Activities, I have seen both the potential and the missed opportunities. Using those strengths to address the challenges is the plan that I have set out in my position statement. If you believe with me that building on the “society” in our name, along with the innovative, adaptable, and nimble people that make up our profession is the right way to move forward, then please entrust me with your vote.

Some Ideas for Improving the IEEE Computer Society

I think that the best ideas will come from the membership, in collaboration with the IEEE-CS leadership (including the Board of Governors) and the IEEE-CS staff. However, to show that there are both opportunities and a few challenges, here are some ideas that I will explore. And should I not be elected, I will offer these in my role as a member of the board of governors.

One point that I'd like to make first. There are many things that we'd like to do for our profession. For some, the Computer Society has a clear leadership role, for example, in conferences and publications. In others, the Computer Society can support and encourage, helping our membership mobilize to address issues and solve problems. And some things may be out of scope for various reasons, including available resources, the non-profit status of the IEEE and the Computer Society, the need to represent all members of our profession, etc. As you think about what you'd like to see the Computer Society accomplish, keep in mind the unique strengths and resources of the Computer Society, and in what areas the Computer Society can make a big impact.

Click on each topic to see more text.

Membership

The Membership in the Computer Society has been slowly but steadily declining in number. The Computer Society has been looking at ways to attract more members, and I support those efforts. Important areas to address include international membership and membership from industry.

We must do a better job at making IEEE-CS attractive to students.
1. Job fair and career information. Look to the SC student program as an example; encourage conferences to ask leading practitioners to talk with students, perhaps even organize a no-host dinner.
2. Student chapters aligned with the Computer Society. The IEEE has a complex structure for geographically organized groups. It is surprising hard to find what groups are really local to you, and it is equally hard to find out if you have a local student chapter; the complex structure and the reasons for it are not clear to our members. These informational items should be easy to fix.
  More importantly, this complexity has hidden some problems. For example, my own institution has no chapter of the computer society, even though it has a large IEEE section. With no Computer Society chapter, there can be no Computer Society student chapter. To start with, we need to be proactive about finding unserved communities and reaching out to find volunteers from those communities to create new chapters. And to do that, we need to make this more attractive to those volunteers.
Retention of members, especially young professionals

I firmly believe that communication with the members at all levels is key. We need to focus on why members should join and remain members of our community. Our strength is that we are a society and a community. Most products that we have, such as the digital library or training materials, while excellent of themselves, have strong competition and are not areas where we can dominate the competition. Developing specific ideas here needs to be done in collaboration with members at all stages of their career. And we also need to recognize that the reasons that some people became members may no longer be compelling, and at the same time, there may be new opportunities. I will create an ad hoc committee, with broad representation and with resources to survey the membership and the broader community, to develop a three year plan to revamp how we work with and serve our membership.

Conferences

Make clear the value of the Computer Society to conferences

Conferences of all sizes need to see value in being associated with the Computer Society; when they don't, they may leave either under an independent organization or switch to a different professional society (for example, either within IEEE or ACM). We can do much more to ensure that we are valuable to conferences. An easy first step is a simple survey of the conference leadership about the computer society did well, what it did badly, and what services would be valuable in the future. This would both help identify problems before they became a crisis and provide guidance on what new services to offer and what services were no longer needed.
Incentives for Conferences

The incentives for meetings to return a surplus are based on having an active TC — where this is not the case (as it is for SC), these incentives cannot work. Further, these incentives can be tuned to provide a greater incentive for a surplus. For example, in the case of the SC conference, a portion of the surplus is returned to the conference for use in subsequent years.
Help conferences grow

Make an active effort to encourage conferences to grow and to include industry participation. We can create an ad hoc committee of the largest conferences to look at opportunities and address policy and support issues, which are different for large conferences compared to smaller conferences.
Better support our large conferences

The IEEE-CS has one large (over 12,000 attendees) conference (SC) and at least one rapidly growing conference that now needs a convention center (CVPR). But SC is orphaned — it has no strong technical committee behind it (TCHPC, a consortium, is a start but doesn't have the visibility or influence that ACM's SIGHPC does). This must be fixed. For example, which TC from IEEE-CS should have membership on the SC steering committee? How should the value of SC to the computer society be communicated? Establishing a tight, beneficial connection between our largest conferences and the technical committees is essential in ensuring that conferences and the Computer Society are working together.

Publications

Explore new publication models

There are new publication models, such as Jupyter notebooks. What sort of pilot should we run to understand the issues? Can we do that in cooperation with another IEEE society, or even with ACM?
Open Access

Open Access is here. All publishers, both commercial (for profit) and non-profit such as IEEE and ACM, are struggling with how to make Open Access work financially. We already have Open Access journals and are looking into what Open Access means for conferences. Both IEEE as a whole and the Computer Society are looking at ways to provide Open Access, while addressing the very real financial issues both to the socieity and to authors with access to publication funds, as well as the long term sustainability of the data (how much would you charge to preserve a Terabyte of data for 10 years? For 100years?). We need to continue to explore models that both accoplish the general availability of research data and provide ways to sustain that access and the services that provide extra value (especially peer reviewing). I will encourage the development of pilot programs to explore different approaches, in collaboration with our technical communities (TCs) and with the editorial boards of our publications.
Respond more rapidly to emerging communities

Use a call for proposals for a new journal in order to get some competition and innovation into the process. We can make it clear that the Computer Society is eager to support communities in new or growing areas.

Diversity and Inclusion

Opportunities

How do we improve diversity and inclusion? Research on unconscious or implicit bias shows that even the best intentioned people hold biases, and (despite some claims) these can't be “cured”. The challenge is to recognize and compensate for these biases. There are no simple solutions, but there are some simple steps that can help. One that is easy to implement is to require diverse and inclusive lists for filling opportunities, whether these are program committee members for a conference, nominations for awards (or named awards, as in the point above), or leadership roles in the society.
Provide a supportive environment

Any implementation plan to improve diversity and inclusion must do more than just “get new people in the door”. They need and deserve an environment that supports them. One simple step is ask everyone about what is good and bad about their work environment; such “climate surveys” can improve the environment for everyone.
Confronting Prejudice

The previous points take the view that everyone agrees with the goals of creating a more diverse and inclusive community. Sadly, this is not true, and any organization that considers itself a society must be prepared to confront prejudice both within the society and in its interactions with others.
Community Resources
There are many resources that can help everyone create a more diverse and inclusive environment. We can take advantage of these—we don't need to create our own versions, though we certainly should supplement them for aspects that are specific for the Computer Society. Here are a few sources of resources; please email with any that you have found useful.
- CRA-W Resources
- NCWIT Resources. See, for example, NCWIT Tips: 13 Tips to Make Technical Conferences More Inclusive.
- Gender Equity Conference organized by the American Physical Society in 2007. I attended this (as "physics" management from Argonne National Laboratory) and found it illuminating and helpful. Some of the practices that I learned here are both still applicable and helpful and (sadly) not widely used.
- Awards
  
  The Computer Society has a number of awards that are named after some of the leaders in computer science. However, these are not a very diverse group, and that is a problem. I call on our community to create a more diverse and inclusive list of the people that have transformed our field, and consider where we should create new awards (and yes, the creation of a new award should be hard, but in a growing field, the number of awards should grow).

Community

Listen!

We need to listen to the membership! What do you want from the computer society? Chapters should be one way to collect feedback from the membership; direct surveys are now easy and can provide immediate feedback from the membership.
Informing Policymakers

We need to represent Computing to society and to policy makers, by providing factual advice and by coordinating with other professional societies (not just ACM — for example, SIAM for computational science).
Broaden participation in committees

Board of Governors boards and committees need to be better at including both board members and members of the community. Specifically, they need to be more active at reaching out and recruiting other voices.

Operations

Streamline

We all like to innovate, but we need to provide more coordination and common themes/structure. We must evaluate what activities need to be ended or merged on a regular basis.
Be more quantitative in addressing issues

We often tell our students or staff not to focus on the last few percent of performance and not to put effort into work that will have little overall impact. Yet many discussions I've heard ignore the size of the impact. We can be more efficient and even more strategic by being aware of the potential size of the impact; further, without this consideration, discussions tend to be “one size fits all” rather than recognizing that, for example, a conference with 100 attendees is significantly different in many ways from a conference with 10,000 attendees.
The Computer Society and IEEE

The IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE have a complicated relationship, which has and will continue to cause tensions. The best way to manage this is to communicate early and often about goals and challenges, and take a constructive, “lets see how we can make this work together” approach. We will not always agree, but it is in the IEEE's interest to have a successful computer society, and we can work with that.

More about me

My home page
My CV
The Using MPI books have sold over 20,000 copies in all editions (Using MPI is in its 3^rd edition).

Two Books You Should Read

I've recently read several books that I found illuminating and that I believe everyone should read. One is Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men; this is a very data-rich indictment of how women are ignored in ways large and small, to the determint of all of us.

We've seen tremendous advances in the application of computing and data, but we've also seen some of the negative consequences of even unintentional misuse of data. I think every computer scientist should read Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Not only does the author make a compelling case, she offers principles that, if widely adopted, would help Big Data benefit, rather than threaten, society. I'd like to see every student in Computer Science read and discuss this book.

Are there books that you think I should read? Let me know!

Some recent work on behalf of the community

I co-chaired the committee that produced Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure to Support U.S. Science and Engineering in 2017-2020, a report of the National Academies for the National Science Foundation that makes recommendations for how NSF should provide support for advanced computing, not just through 2020 but beyond. I also co-chaired a follow-on workshop, Opportunities from the Integration of Simulation Science and Data Science, held earlier this year.
As a member of the committee that produced Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology, I ensured that the pivotal role of HPC in supporting the nation's science enterprise was acknowledged.
As general chair of SC13, I oversaw and guided the efforts of nearly 600 volunteers to put on the premier conference in HPC. Both the keynote by Genevieve Bell and the 25^th Anniversary Video are available (Bell's keynote is, unfortunately, currently unavailable except in the entire opening session, which include my introduction to SC13, the presentation of major Society awards, and Bell's talk.).
I was a co-founder of the SIGHPC in ACM, including serving as the initial Newsletter editor through the end of 2015. This special interest group was the fastest growing SIG in ACM's history in its first years, showing the pent up demand for an HPC community at ACM.

IEEE CS Activities

Major Accomplishments

I have contributed to the technical and financial success of the largest conference sponsored by IEEE-CS, the SC conference (supercomputing.org), particularly as technical papers and program chair, and as finance chair in 2011 and general chair in 2013.
I was the chair of the IEEE-CS Ad Hoc to improve SC conference relations. As such, I was involved with establishing the Technical Council on HPC inside the CS.
I organized IEEE Cluster 2002 in Chicago, including the bid, local arrangements, and served as technical program chair.

IEEE Conference Leadership

IEEE/ACM SC06 Technical papers co-chair
IEEE/ACM SC09 Technical program chair
IEEE/ACM SC11 Finance chair
IEEE/ACM SC13 General chair
IEEE/ACM SC17 Vice chair
IEEE/ACM SC19 Plenary production (Keynote) chair
IEEE/ACM SC Steering committee (2011-2015; chair-2014)
IEEE Cluster conference 2002 Technical program chair
IEEE Cluster conference 2006 Technical program chair
IEEE/ACM CCGrid 2012 Technical program Area chair

Technical program committee member for IEEE Conferences

IEEE/ACM SC 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020
IEEE/ACM CCGrid 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
IEEE Cluster 2003, 2004, 2014, 2015, 2016
IEEE IPDPS 2004, 2008, 2014, 2015
IEEE IWIA 2003, 2007
IEEE/ACM PACT 2015, 2016
IEEE BDSE 2014

Other IEEE Activities

IEEE-CS Board of Governors since 2017
IEEE-CS VP for Technical and Conference Activities 2019-2020
Chair, 2016 Ad Hoc to improve IEEE-CS / SC conference relations
IEEE-CS Seymour Cray Award committee (2004,2009)
IEEE-CS Sidney Fernbach Award Committee (2009)
ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award Committee (2017-2019), chair in 2019

Not only work

I am lucky to have a great family. My wife, Patty, has been an unflagging source of support and love. My son, Chris, is a graduate student in Computer Science at The University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where he is working on AI. In 2017, he ran on over 1,100,000 cores currently on AWS as part of some work on topic modeling at Clemson University.
I'm a fan of science fiction. Among movies and videos, Serenity is a favorite; I saw it before seeing Firefly. Babylon 5 is another favorite; it was one of the first TV series with a multi-year arc. Though I don't normally read or watch horror, Annihilation, both the book by Jeff Vanderkamp, and the movie (best described as inspired by the novel), are both evocative and horrifying because of the setting and events, not because of any gruesome images.
For books, some recent favorites include the Laundry stories of Charles Stross and the Craft sequence of Max Gladstone; both are takes on modern bureaucracies meet the occult (though very different) and are good light reading. Another, darker entry in this genre is The Rook, by Daniel O'Malley. C.J. Cherryh is another favorite; both the early stories such as the Morgaine Stories and the on-going Foreigner novels.
I also read a lot of history ("those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it"). Two recent reads include The First Congress, about the first congress after the US constitution was ratified (and the statecraft and otherwise that defined the mechanisms for the US government that in many cases are still with us), and Neptune's Inferno, about the US Navy at Guadalcanal, with an interesting emphasis on missed opportunities for American dominance by failing to properly exploit the American's lead in Radar.
The intersection of the arts and technology interest me. 19^th century painters celebrated the progress of technology; Monet painted bridges and railway stations, and Turner's The Last Voyage of the Fighting Temeraire reminds us that major changes in technology (and the relegation of the previous technology to the scrap heap) didn't start in the 20^th century.
A Space Child's Mother Goose has the nursery rhymes updated to the 1950's. "The Theory that Jack Built" is a classic. I can still recite "Little Miss Muffet".

Disclaimer

The opinions on this page are mine and are not necessarily those of the IEEE Computer Society or the IEEE.