Mary Jane Irwin,
Evan Pugh Professor and Co-director of the Embedded and Mobile Computing
Center (emc2) in the CSE Department at Penn State University, has served at
high levels with distinction in three of the main computing research
professional organizations. She was a long-time and active member of the CRA
board and vice-chair for four years; a member of council and vice president
of ACM; and a member of council of the IEEE Computer Society.
Irwin played a fundamental role in founding
CRA-W, and has
continued to be active in this leading organization for more than a decade.
She has helped to set the future research agenda for the computer
architecture community by co-chairing
CRA's grand challenge conference in this area. Her record of
participation in professional publications and conference activities is
unusually rich.
David Patterson,
Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, has
a wide range of service activities in addition to being a leading computing
researcher. He served for four years as CRA's board chair, during which he
revitalized the membership of the board, greatly strengthened the financial
abilities of the organization so it could better carry out work on behalf of
the computing research community, and oversaw an expansion and strengthening
of the programs, in particular in government affairs and representation of
women.
As current president of ACM, Patterson has used his standing to speak out
forcefully and effectively for improving the innovation climate in the
United States through his efforts to return DARPA to a more basic research
agenda, increasing federal funding for computing research and development,
making the United States a more welcoming place to foreign students and
researchers, and encouraging American students to pursue a computing
research career.