The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Robert ("Bobby") Schnabel executive director and CEO effective November 1, 2015. Schnabel joins ACM after eight years as professor and dean of the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. As ACM's most senior staff member, Schnabel will work with ACM's volunteer community to provide strategic vision and to develop sustainable business models to ensure ACM's continued worldwide membership, publications and revenue growth.
Schnabel succeeds John R. White, ACM's first executive director to be named CEO, who will retire after nearly 17 years on July 31. ACM COO Patricia Ryan will serve as acting executive director until Schnabel assumes his new role in November. White joined ACM as CEO after serving for 17 years in various volunteer positions culminating in his term as ACM President (1990 – 1992) while a research manager at Xerox PARC's Computer Science Laboratory.
Schnabel has a long history of service to the computing community. He has served in several capacities, including chair, of ACM's Special Interest Group on Numerical Mathematics (ACM SIGNUM). When Schnabel assumes his role as CEO, he will step down as founding chair of the ACM Education Policy Committee, which led to the creation of Computer Science Education Week in the US, and the formation of the industry/non-profit coalition, Computing in the Core. Schnabel also serves as board member of code.org, and as a member of the advisory committee of the Computing and Information Science and Engineering directorate of the National Science Foundation. He has served as a board member of the Computing Research Association.
Dedicated to improving diversity in computing, Schnabel is a co-founder and executive team member of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), a major non-profit organisation in the US for the full participation of girls and women in computing and information technology. He also serves as chair of the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Advisory Board.
A Fellow of ACM and SIAM, Schnabel has a technical background in numerical computation, and he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in this area. He has served as editor-in-chief of SIAM Review and as associate editor of several journals, including SIAM Journal on Optimization, Mathematical Programming A, Mathematical Programming B and Operations Research Letters.
