Barford, Jha named ACM Distinguished Scientists

December 18th 2014 Simon Kuran
Awards, Natural & Physical Sciences
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Two UW-Madison computer scientists have been honored this month by their field's leading professional organization, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM recently announced that Professors Paul Barford and Somesh Jha have been named ACM Distinguished Scientists.

Barford and Jha join an elite, global group of individuals honored for their "singular impacts on the vital field of computing," according to ACM. The Distinguished Scientist honor is one of three categories of Distinguished Membership in ACM, alongside Distinguished Educator and Distinguished Engineer.

Barford Barford

The ACM Distinguished Member program can recognize the top 10 percent of ACM worldwide membership based on professional experience, as well as significant achievements in computing. ACM’s current worldwide membership exceeds 100,000. Forty-nine computer scientists became Distinguished Members this year.

"Both Paul Barford and Somesh Jha are tremendously important members of our faculty," says Professor Mark D. Hill, chair of UW-Madison's Department of Computer Sciences."Professor Barford brings expertise in networking and network security, while Professor Jha is a leader in security, especially via formal methods."

ACM president Alexander Wolf hailed the new Distinguished Members as "drivers of the advances and inventions that are propelling the information revolution in new directions."

Barford joined the UW-Madison faculty in 2001. He has been recognized by the computer sciences department for his teaching, winning its Carolyn Rosner Excellent Educator Award in 2014. Barford has also worked to foster entrepreneurship among students, creating a popular class with colleague Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau on starting a software company. He is the co-founder of MdotLabs, a fraud detection company that was sold to comScore, Inc., earlier this year. He received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 2004.

Jha Jha

Jha came to UW-Madison in 2000 and received an NSF CAREER Award in 2005. His work focuses on analysis of security protocols, intrusion detection and analyzing malicious code. Recently, he has also worked on privacy-preserving protocols. Jha has published more than 100 articles in refereed, highly selective conference proceedings and journals.

Story by Jennifer A. Smith, Department of Computer Sciences