Vardi wins ACM Presidential Award

Vardi wins ACM Presidential Award

BY PATRICK KURP
Special to the Rice News

Moshe Vardi, the Karen Ostrum George Professor in Computational Engineering and director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology, has received a 2008 Presidential Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

	MOSHE VARDI

Vardi was cited for his ”unwavering commitment” in driving the ACM Job Migration Task Force and its “Globalization and Offshoring of Software” report, released in February 2006. Vardi co-edited the study with William Aspray, the Rudy Professor of Informatics at Indiana University, and Frank Mayadas, program officer for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The ACM study group determined the most likely prognosis for the United States would be that 2 to 3 percent of jobs in information technology would go offshore annually in the next decade. The report stirred interest when it also found that more jobs will be created than lost, so as long as the industry in the United States continues its move toward higher-value work – that is, applying information technology to such fields as biology and business.

George R. Brown School of Engineering
Learn more about computational engineering and computer science in the George R. Brown School of Engineering They noted that employment in the information technology industry was higher today than at the peak of the dot-com bubble, despite the growth of offshore outsourcing in recent years.

The award also recognizes Vardi’s efforts to revitalize the ACM’s flagship publication, Communications of the ACM. Vardi recently became its editor-in-chief.