Queen’s professor Ahmed E. Hassan (School of Computing) has been named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s preeminent association for computing research. Dr. Hassan, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fellow and Canada Research Chair in Software Analytics, has been advancing the field of software systems in a career that spans 20 years.

His research program focuses on improving both the productivity of software practitioners and the quality of software systems, especially very large-scale ones – like Google, Facebook, and Twitter-scale systems. These ultra-large-scale systems bring unprecedented complexities with such challenges increasing exponentially every year as society’s dependence on computing keeps on rising.

For a long time, Dr. Hassan has championed the need for automation to support software practitioners. He has been investigating data generated as practitioners work on these systems, or as the systems process requests. If leveraged appropriately, Dr. Hassan believes, this data can have a tremendous impact, increasing productivity of developers and improving the quality of their work.

These ideas led to the creation of a discipline called the Mining Software Repositories field (MSR). “Today many of the MSR innovations are adopted by world leading companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google, in order to improve the quality of their systems and increase the productivity of their developers,” says Dr. Hassan.

The ACM fellows program recognizes the top one per cent of ACM members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community. Fellows are nominated by their peers, with nominations reviewed by a distinguished selection committee.

“It is a very honourable recognition to be elevated to an ACM Fellow,” says Dr. Hassan. “As a grad student and even as a senior professor, I always held the highest respect for ACM and IEEE fellows. You can say they are a computer scientist’s version of rock stars.”

The fellowship, for Dr. Hassan, is an extra boost of motivation to further his research and expand its impact for the computing community and society. In his journey so far and looking towards the future, he is thankful for the support he has received from the School of Computing, Queen’s, his mentors, and his trainees. “While the fellowship recognizes me by name, the reality is that an ACM fellow is a recognition of the generous support that I received throughout my career,” he states.

Learn more about the fellowship on the ACM website.

This story was originally posted by Queen’s Faculty of Arts and Science.