Ask the Candidates for ACM President!

https://tinyurl.com/acmelection2026

The 2026 Candidates for ACM President are Jens Palsberg from UCLA and Elisa Bertino from Purdue. Each candidate will provide an official statement to appear with the ACM election materials . In addition, we are soliciting questions from the computing community that we will send to both candidates. Questions will be collected through a Google form and through a forum at OnlineQuestions.org (Event 16933). The questions will be collected/collated/edited by moderator, Moshe Vardi.

We hope that ACM will organize similar question question forums in the future, but for now this in an unofficial, community organized effort. You do not have to be an ACM member to suggest questions.

ACM Members: Remember to vote!


Process

Questions will be collected both via a Google Form and through an OnlineQuestions event. They will be collated/edited/combined by moderator Moshe Vardi. The questions will be posted here when they are sent to the candidates. We will post answers we receive from the candidates.

Questions or comments?

We welcome questions and feedback about this process including suggestions for how to do this better in the future.

Please reach out to vardi at cs.rice.edu with questions, comments, suggestions.

Questions and Answers

  1. Q: With all due respect to Vardi, why is he running this Q&A as a private person. Shouldn't ACM be running it as part of the election process? JP: Perhaps this QandA is like developing a new course at UCLA. The flow at UCLA is that the instructor first gives an informal version and later proposes a course that goes on the books. My hope is that Vardi's effort can lead to an election process that is on the books.
  2. Q: What is the biggest thing you would like to change in ACM as president?
    JP: The biggest thing I want to change in ACM is the communication with the community.
  3. Q: Why do you think the petition to boycott the International Congress of Mathematics (ICM), where the Fields Medal is awarded, if it remains in the US is so popular? How would you as ACM president represent the scholarly voices who are so discontent with the United States right now?
    JP: ACM is international and our conference organizers think a lot about where to locate our meetings. I like that we can respond to community voices about preferred locations and unfavored locations.
  4. Q: What are your views on the climate footprint of our community? How do you believe we can transform our practice in order to respect the Paris agreement on climate (COP21)
    JP: As I wrote in CACM in 2020, we should publicly account for the carbon footprint of our conferences. This will be the first step towards managing our practice.
  5. Q: Why aren't you running for ACM president yourself, Moshe?
    MV: I considered running about a decade ago, but I decided against it for personal reasons, which are still valid.
  6. Q: What reasons can you give a young researcher why they should join ACM, beyond just supporting the field?
    JP: We should all spend some of our time on helping other people. ACM gives many wonderful opportunities to do that.
  7. Q: How do you handle the split constituency, research and practitioners, and should we still serve both?
    JP: We should serve both constituencies. One of the ways I want to increase the involvement of the practitioners is to make them mentors of current students.
  8. Q: How do we make Computing feel like a single field, instead of just a union of SIGs?
    JP: I don't think we need to make computing feel like a single field. One of our biggest problems is to make ACM feel small, rather than big.
  9. Q: How should ACM take the lead in AI? Should we embrace the future or the past?
    JP: We should embrace the future and help our practioners get the AI skills they need to stay employed.