Shekhar re-elected to CRA Board
CS&E Professor Shashi Shekhar was recently re-elected as a member of the Computing Research Association (CRA) Board of Directors. The CRA Board of Directors is a distinguished group of leaders in computing research from academia and industry.
“I am humbled by the support of heads of computer science departments and the opportunity to serve the computing research community in addressing new challenges,” Shekhar said.
Shekhar will tackle a number of challenges during his second term on the board. One example he pointed out is addressing the faculty recruiting challenges. The number of faculty position openings have increased in the aftermath of enrollment growth. Faculty workload has increased with multiple candidates on campus each week. Yield to faculty job offers is lower and several strong candidates are being overlooked.
Shekhar has already made progress toward addressing these problems. During his first term on the board, he co-led a 2018 Snowbird panel discussion on Improving Faculty Recruiting in the Computing Community. Subsequently, he co-led the CRA CV Database initiative, which he aims to continue to grow in the years to come.
“I plan to shepherd this initiative through its early years by listening to early adopters and refining the system for broader adoption,” Shekhar said. “Further, I will probe additional initiatives and highlight those which have helped recruiting in other disciplines.”
Shekhar also hopes to explore ways to grow computing research funding by engaging industry and foundations to meet the challenges of CS faculty growth in a tight federal budget environment.
To meet these challenges, Shekhar seeks the help of the broader computing research community.
“I encourage my colleagues to take advantage of CRA initiatives addressing our community’s various challenges and volunteer to serve,” Shekhar said.
As an organization, CRA enhances innovation by combining, government, industry and academia to strengthen education and research in computing. CRA board members address major issues affecting the computing research community and shape the community’s responses and actions. The Board provides the membership for standing committees, such as the Government Affairs, Snowbird Conference, Taulbee Survey, CRA-W, Education, Computing Community Consortium committees.
CRA’s membership includes more than 200 North American organizations active in computing research: academic departments of computer science and computer engineering, laboratories and centers (industry, government, and academia), and affiliated professional societies (AAAI, ACM, CACS/AIC, IEEE Computer Society, SIAM, USENIX).
Join CS&E in congratulating Professor Shekhar for this achievement, and for continuing to make an impact on the world of computing!