Yannis Ioannidis - ACM Statement

I feel privileged to call ACM my professional home! I joined as a graduate student and have been contributing to its mission of “advancement of the art, science, engineering, and application of computing” since then.

If honored to be elected as President, I will use my experience from earlier volunteer positions to help ACM strengthen its leadership role, keep its finger on the pulse of the evolving needs of the computing community, and expand its extensive services to benefit all computing researchers, industry professionals, educators, and students around the world. In addition to strategic initiatives already in progress, I intend to pursue the following issues, which I care deeply about:

• Expand footprint and become the home of interdisciplinary areas that involve computing: Our field is on the critical path of most scientific and societal activities. Interdisciplinarity is at the core of this, but the communities of “computational X/X-informatics” are largely elusive for ACM. While solidifying its spectrum of purely technological communities, ACM should also lead in shaping computing-related interdisciplinary areas, form strategic alliances with peer scientific societies, and expand its membership with colleagues of mixed backgrounds, giving them space for growth.
• Facilitate Open Science methods: ACM should be a pioneer again and help redefine scholarly communication and the entire research life cycle, under the principles of reproducibility and accountability. It should treat software and data as first-class publishable results, embed all provenance artifacts in a publication, and explore new review processes and access policies. Especially on the latter, I will make every effort to achieve the financial viability of the current ACM plan towards pure open access.
• Prioritize social responsibility: ACM should promote its new Code of Ethics widely within the community and should engage with and advise policy makers on cutting-edge technologies that may have significant consequences on society, such as threats on democracy, increasing inequalities, and loss of privacy. It should raise a strong voice for the application of technological innovation within clear ethical boundaries.
• Join forces to address global challenges: The UN SDGs capture significant long-term challenges that digital technologies are fundamental in overcoming. ACM should liaise with the UN and other global organizations and establish the right mechanisms for its members to team up and contribute to relevant solutions.
• Recalibrate for the next generation: Established 75 years ago, ACM has had tremendous impact by evolving continuously to better serve the needs of its diverse and inclusive members. It is time again to take stock of ACM’s strategies and mechanisms, listen to all voices, and make innovative changes that will transition ACM to its 4th quarter-century of life in full strength and agility, continuing to fulfil its vision of being “the premiere global computing society”.