2016 GBC/ACM elections

The nominating committee has nominated a slate of candidates for chapter elections. The candidates are:

Edward Freedman ­ President

John Sopka ­ Vice President

Craig Herndon ­ Treasurer

Marie­Anne Wolf ­ Secretary

Nominations from the floor may also be made at our meeting scheduled for Thursday, May 19, at 7 pm, in the Broad Institute Auditorium.

The actual election will take place Thursday, June 23rd at 6:30 pm in MIT room E51-315, just before our June meeting which takes place in the same room.

Edward Freedman is a long standing member of ACM and several ACM SIGs throughout his career. He is also a member of the IEEE including the Computer Society, Social Implications of Technology Society, and others. He has been an active member of the GBC/ACM Executive Board in multiple roles for about ten years and has previously served as President 2008 to 2010. He is currently chapter Vice-President.

Edward holds degrees in Physics, Computer Science, and Bioinformatics. He has worked at university research labs, government agencies (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and White Sands Missile Range), private industry (Digital Equipment), and at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a leading research center for genomic science. He is currently teaching bioinformatics at Harvard and consulting on bioinformatics and scientific software.

Position statement: One of the challenges GBC/ACM faces as a generalist organization is maintaining relevance and growing membership amidst an increasingly fractured landscape of specialized interests served by specific meetup groups. My intention is to make our broad spectrum an advantage, serving as a hub by partnering with specialized groups, local infrastructure and government, and increasing our educational outreach.

John Sopka is a Consultant Technologist in High Performance Systems Software, living in Groton, MA. He formerly worked at EMC, Sun and Digital. He has been an ACM member for over 40 years, past Secretary/Treasurer of ACM SIGPLAN, founding member and Chair of the Merrimack Valley Chapter of the ACM (no longer active), organizing committee member of various ACM and IEEE conferences, and most recently Chair of the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society. His professional career has spanned software development in Numerical Analysis, Real-time Data Acquisition, Operating System Kernels and Hypervisors, and Storage I/O Subsystems. He is currently focusing on the disruptions and advances associated with the handling and analysis of Big Data.

Position:
I have benefited tremendously from the technical programs of the GBCACM and the professional interactions that they generate. I look forward to doing whatever I can to support and continue those activities by the GBCACM and to help to keep the GBCACM viable and relevant in this period of dramatic technological upheaval. Thank you for this opportunity to serve.

Mary-Anne Wolf has agreed to run for re-election as Secretary, a post she has served in since 2010. Mary-Anne is between jobs. She is currently working on various personal projects including one related to detecting side effects from combinations of drugs that do not occur with the same drugs taken by themselves.

Position:
Mary-Anne's primary goals as Secretary are: make sure members of the board can find out what other members are doing related to GBCACM, keep records of decisions made, help board members remember what they promise to do, and support everyone knowing when and where meetings will be.

Craig Herndon is a Programmer Analyst for the Boston Consulting Group and Co-founder of Digital Precept, an independent game studio based out of Memphis TN. He recently started the Boston Unity 3D virtual Reality meet up. Craig has been involved with the ACM since college at the University of Memphis where he served as chapter president for three years and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. As an undergraduate, Craig researched wireless sensor networks and dynamic traffic assignment algorithms under Dr. Santosh Kumar in the Wisemanet lab.