SIGKDD Elects Jian Pei as Chair, Michael Zeller Treasurer, New Executive Committee
New SIGKDD chair will be Dr. Jian Pei. He says SIGKDD must continue serving academia and industry in a balanced and innovative manner.
ACM SIGKDD, ACM's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), is the premier global professional organization for researchers and professionals dedicated to the advancement of the science and practice of data science, data mining, and knowledge discovery. SIGKDD organizes the annual KDD Conference, the leading research conference in the field.
The ACM SIGKDD 2017 election was recently concluded. The new SIGKDD leadership team took office on July 1, 2017.
The newly elected chair of SIGKDD is
Dr. Jian Pei, professor and Canada Research Chair at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Professor Pei is a well respected data mining, data science and database researcher. He received the 2015 SIGKDD Service Award. SIGKDD community is honored to have him serve as chair.
"SIGKDD must continue serving academia and industry in a balanced and innovative manner. Data science is the defining keyword and the identity of SIGKDD. SIGKDD must continue serving the related communities collaboratively, such as machine learning, AI, statistics, databases, cognitive science, and more. SIGKDD must continue its dedication to promoting diversity, such as advancement of women in the KDD professions and members in different regions and application domains. Most importantly, SIGKDD must proactively foster the next generation." states Professor Pei.
Dr. Michael Zeller, was re-elected as the treasurer.
He is currently SVP AI Strategy & Innovation of Software AG. Previously he was a co-founder and CEO of Zementis until Zementis was acquired by Software AG. Dr. Zeller had contributed to KDD community in many ways and roles, including serving as the Industry and Government Track co-chair for KDD-2012.
"As SIGKDD Secretary-Treasurer, I intend to contribute my fiscal experience in running a software company to wisely manage the SIGKDD budget. In addition to a special emphasis on interdisciplinary research, I believe that fostering a strong partnership between research institutions and industry organizations is the key for the continued success of our field. As Secretary-Treasurer, I plan to continue my involvement with the organization of the KDD conference, intend to renew membership growth and increase the visibility of the ACM SIGKDD organization, with a special focus on industry relationships and data science standards." adds Dr. Zeller.
SIGKDD members also elected the SIGKDD executive committee (EC):
- Deepak Agarwal, LinkedIn; (re-elected)
- Johannes Gehrke, Microsoft; (re-elected)
- Jure Leskovec, Stanford University and Pinterest (new)
- Claudia Perlich, Dstillery; (new)
- Geoffrey I Webb, Monash University; (new)
- Mohammed J. Zaki, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (re-elected)
SIGKDD is grateful for the volunteer contributions of past SIGKDD EC officers whose term recently ended (2013 - 2017): Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnan, Microsoft, and Dr. Ying Li, DataSpark Pte. Ltd. Their guidance and leadership have resulted in establishing SIGKDD and its annual KDD conference as the flagship venue for data mining and machine learning research.
Being a volunteer run organization, SIGKDD relies heavily on member contributions. These roles are significantly challenging and strategic to the directions of advancing knowledge discovery, data mining and machine learning research and practice. The experiences and diversity that these new officers bring to the team showcases the many dimensions in which SIGKDD continues to grow and evolve as an organization. We wish the new team all the very best to further the mission of innovation at SIGKDD.
Meet the new SIGKDD EC at the upcoming KDD 2017 conference, August 13-17, 2017, in Halifax. We hope to see you there!
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