Sunday, July 1, 2018

New SIGACT Executive Committee

I am delighted to have the opportunity to work for the next three years, with an amazing (elected) team of Eric Allender (Rutgers), Shuchi Chawla (Wisconsin), Nicole Immorlica (Microsoft) and Robert Kleinberg (Cornell). I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of the prior leadership of SIGACT, and I am sure we will continue to rely on them for advice and wisdom. 

The previous committee was:

Michael Mitzenmacher (Chair)
Toni Pitassi (Vice Chair)
Eric Vigoda (Treasurer-Secretary)
Anna Karlin (Member at large)
Ryan Williams (Member at large)



I also wanted to thank everyone who took the time and put in the effort to run for election, and I hope they will contribute their ideas, and energies as we form various sub-committees to help with the initiatives that we undertake in the future. We can use all the help we can get!

The SIG committees typically meet twice a year, and I am sure we will have plenty of discussions by email/phone. We also hope to broadly engage the community each year by having open forums, both annual in-person town-halls as well as via blogs.

There are several issues the committee will discuss and bring forward for discussion, and we would also like at this stage to identify a few major topics for discussion (and all members of SIGACT should feel free to talk any of the committee members about ways in which we can all improve our community, as well make it more inclusive, engaging and vibrant). We will also be looking to create new sub-committees, and so your ideas and passion will both be welcome!

Some topics of engagement:
(i) expand SIGACT membership to include all graduate students working on theoretical CS related areas, 
(ii) look for ways to interact with other SIGs to create new research opportunities in interfacing areas via workshops,
(iii) look for ways to make our community more inclusive.

On behalf of the entire committee, I would like to say that we are looking forward to serving all of you.

Samir Khuller
University of Maryland
Chair SIGACT