Doug Engelbart's    Colloquium at Stanford

An In-Depth Look at "The Unfinished Revolution"

Barbara Simons was elected President of ACM in 1998. Prior to becoming ACM President, Simons chaired ACM's U.S. Technology Policy Committee (USACM), and the ACM Committee for Scientific Freedom and Human Rights. Simons was elected Secretary of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) in 1999, and she has been on the CSSP Board since 1998.  She has been a member of the U.C. Berkeley Engineering Fund Board of Directors since 1998.  Simons is a Fellow of ACM and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2

Simons earned her Ph.D. in computer science from U.C. Berkeley; her dissertation solved a major open problem in scheduling theory.  She became a Research Staff Member at IBM's San Jose Research Center (now Almaden), where she did research on scheduling theory, compiler optimization, and fault tolerant distributed computing. She received an IBM Research Division Award for her work on clock synchronization. She then joined IBM's Applications Development Technology Institute and subsequently served as senior technology advisor for IBM Global Services. Simons holds several patents and has authored numerous technical papers. 3

Simons will be presented with the Distinguished Alumnus Award in Computer Sciences and Engineering by U.C. Berkeley in May, 2000.  She was selected by C|NET as one of its 26 Internet "visionaries" and was named one of the "Top 100 Women in Computing" by Open Computing. She has received the Norbert Wiener Award from the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Science Magazine featured her in a special edition on women in science in 1992. 4

Simons currently serves on the President's Export Council's Subcommittee on Encryption, and she had been a member of the Information Technology Working Group of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion.  She has testified before both the U.S. and the California legislatures and at government sponsored hearings on cryptography, medical privacy, authentication for access to online records, and intellectual property on the Internet. 5

Simons co-founded the U.C. Berkeley Computer Science Department Reentry Program for Women and Minorities.  She has also worked for over twenty years to encourage women and girls to enter computer science and related fields. 6

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