ABI-ONE ghc program v14.indd - Grace Hopper Celebration of ...

ANITA BORG TEChNICAL LEADERShIP AWARD WINNER
Laura Haas
ThuRSDAY, 7:00 – 9:00 PM – CENTENNIAL BALLROOM I-IV
FRIDAY, 10:00 – 11:00 AM – MONTREAL/VANCOuVER
uNDERWRITTEN BY CISCO
The Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award is given to a woman who has inspired the
women’s technology community through outstanding technological and social contributions.
The winner has demonstrated how her work has covered new ground and her
technical leadership has increased women’s impact, representation and effectiveness in
the technology arena. The recipient of the 2010 Technical Leadership Award receives a
$10,000 award.
Laura Haas is an IBM Fellow and Director of Computer Science, IBM
Research – Almaden, where she directs research in information management,
human-computer interaction, theoretical foundations of computing,
and healthcare informatics. Dr. Haas is also one of the founders of IBM’s
information integration solutions, which today include products that can integrate
both structured and unstructured data via federation, consolidation and search.
In addition, she has been named one of two “Catalysts for Science” in IBM Research.
In this role, she works with a world-wide team across eight research labs to help
researchers succeed, to help IBM maintain a high scientific profile in the academic
community, and to encourage the kind of ambitious research that can change the
industry and the world.
Laura Haas’ personal research has focused on helping people to find information. Her
accomplishments include her initiation and management of the Starburst research
project, which developed pioneering new technology for extensible database systems
and brought it into production as the basis for a new generation of IBM’s highly
successful DB2 product family. She also pioneered the concept of data federation, the
integrating technology that provides access to many data sources through a common
interface. This technology solves a critical problem for businesses that depend on
information from multiple sources. Laura was the chief architect and technical leader
for data federation in IBM, from its inception as an experimental research project to
its current status as a successful IBM product.
Laura’s leadership has been demonstrated both in her own technical work and in
her impact on the work of others. She managed the Exploratory Database Systems
department at Almaden during the years when it established a reputation as one of
the world’s leading centers of database research. She established an atmosphere in
which creative people thrived and groundbreaking work was encouraged. Under
her leadership, the database department produced six IBM Fellows and five ACM
SIGMOD Innovation Award winners, an unprecedented achievement for an organization
of fewer than 30 people.
Laura Haas was vice-chair of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) from 1989-1997. She
was Vice President of the VLDB Endowment Baord of Trustees from 2004-2009.
She is now vice-chair of the Computing Research Association Board. She was named
an IBM Fellow, IBM’s highest technical honor in 2009, and she was elected to the
National Academy of Engineering in 2010.
About Laura Haas
Laura Haas is an IBM Fellow and has been director
of computer science at IBM Research – Almaden
since 2005 and leads research in computer science
across IBM’s worldwide research labs. Previously,
Dr. Haas was responsible for Information
Integration Solutions (IIS) architecture in IBM’s
Software Group after leading the IIS development
team through its first two years. She joined the
development team in 2001 as manager of DB2
UDB Query Compiler development. Before that,
she was a research staff member and manager at
the Almaden lab for nearly twenty years. In IBM
Research, she worked on and managed a number
of exploratory projects in distributed database
systems. Dr. Haas is best known for her work on
the Starburst query processor (from which DB2 UDB
was developed); on Garlic, a system which allowed
federation of heterogeneous data sources; and on
Clio, the first semi-automatic tool for heterogeneous
schema mapping. Garlic technology, married
with DB2 UDB query processing, is the basis for the
IBM WebSphere Information Server’s federation
capabilities, while Clio capabilities are a core differentiator
in IBM’s Rational Data Architect. Dr. Haas
is an active member of the database community
and currently serves as Vice President of the VLDB
Board of Trustees as well as on many program
committees for technical conferences. She was vice
chair of ACM SIGMOD from 1989-1997. Dr. Haas
has received several IBM awards for Outstanding
Technical Achievement, and an IBM Corporate
Award for her work on federated database technology.
She is a member of the National Academy
of Engineering and the IBM Academy of Technology,
an ACM Fellow, and Vice Chair of the board of the
Computing Research Association. Dr. Haas received
her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and
her bachelor degree from Harvard University.
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology | Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 87