CRA Service Award Winners

Usually annually, CRA presents two awards in the of area of service. The first, the Distinquished Service Award is presented to a person who has made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community. This award is meant to recognize service in the areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications, or conferences, as well as leadership that has had a major impact on computing research.

The second service award honors the late A. Nico Habermann, who headed the National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate until his death. He was deeply committed to increasing the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computing research. In this spirit, this award is presentd to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to aiding members of underrepresented groups within the computing research community. This award recognizes work in areas of government affairs, educational programs, professional societies, public awareness, and leadership. The recipient has made a major impact on advancing underrepresented groups in the computing research community.

CRA Distinguished Service Award

Merrell Patrick has been selected as the recipient of the 1998 CRA Distinguished Service Award. This award is made in recognition of the significant contributions he has made to the computing research community.

Patrick's selection is based on his distinguished service at NSF and the Department of Energy(DoE). At NSF, Patrick is currently Chief Science and Technology Officer for the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). Previously, he served as acting executive officer for CISE, as High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) coordinator, and as program director for New Technologies. At NSF, he also helped draft the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Information and Communications Strategic Plan for Federal Information and Communications Research and Development. At the DoE, Patrick supervised the Academic Strategic Alliance Program of the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI).

Patrick's many accomplishments include a long career in computing, first as an industrial researcher at Lockheed, then as a teacher and computer scientist at Duke University, where he headed the Computation Center, co-founded the Computer Science Department, and served as Professor and Department Chair. He also served as a member of the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) at the NASA Langley Research Center.

CRA A. Nico Habermann Award

Bryant York has been selected as the recipient of the 1998 A. Nico Habermann Award. This award is made in recognition of his outstanding contributions, spanning many years, to underrepresented groups within the computing research community, on both the local and national level.

York is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University. During his academic career, he has initiated and contributed to many projects involving minorities, women, and the disabled. In 1989, he organized an NSF-sponsored workshop on "Computers and Persons with Disabilities." Upon joining NSF in 1990 as a rotator, he supported several projects for improving accessibility to science for the blind. At the same time, he worked with the director of the Clearinghouse for Computer Accommodation of the General Services Administration and the director of the National Institute of Disability Research and Rehabilitation on impacts of the Americans with Disabilities Act on NSF programs. He subsequently co-edited a special section of the Communications of the ACM on Computers and Persons with Disabilities and moderated an NSF workshop on Access to the NII for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities.

For a number of years, York has been active in encouraging minority students to pursue careers in science. For the past eight years he has served as a mentor for minority high school and undergraduate students in New England; he is a member of the curriculum planning committee and volunteers at the Young Achievers School in Roxbury, Massachusetts (he also helped to wire the school during NetDay96). He has chaired the ACM Committee on Minorities, and an NSF-sponsored workshop "Increasing Participation of Minorities in the Computing Disciplines." While at NSF, he conducted a six-week computer-programming contest at Benjamin Banneker High School, a predominantly black high school in Washington, DC and in 1991 York received NSF's prestigious Equal Opportunity Prize.

York's service to the minority computer science community has been recognized by ADMI (Association of Departments of Computer Information Science & Engineering at Minority Institutions), which presented him with awards in 1991 and 1997. He has helped ADMI in important forums during the organization's infancy and has served as an ADMI consultant to minority universities for grant proposal development.