IBM Fellow Ron Fagin elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences


The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected 204 new members across a number of categories, including eight computer scientists. One of these eight was IBM Fellow Ron Fagin, for his breakthrough work. Election to the American Academy is considered one of the nation’s highest honors since its founding during the American Revolution, when its first class included George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

“Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, a college friend of mine, was also elected this year for his work in public affairs. So, it was a thrill to get an email from Reich saying ‘Somehow I always knew we'd end up at the same induction ceremony, fifty years after we met’,” Ron said.

The American Academy recognized Ron for the following accomplishments: 

Ron is an IBM Fellow, which is IBM's highest technical honor. There are currently 87 active IBM Fellows, and there have been only 257 IBM Fellows in the 51-year history of the program.  Ron received his B.A. in mathematics from Dartmouth College and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has won an IBM Corporate Award, eight IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards, an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, and two IBM key patent awards. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ACM, and AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). He has co-authored three papers that won Best Paper Awards and three papers that won Test-of-time Awards, all in major conferences. One of his papers won the 2014 Gödel Prize. He was named Docteur Honoris Causa by the University of Paris, and a "Highly Cited Researcher" by ISI (the Institute for Scientific Information). He won the IEEE Technical Achievement Award, IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award, and ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award (a lifetime achievement award in databases). In addition to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, this year he was also elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.


 

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