Martha E. Pollack

Martha E. Pollack is an American computer scientist and academic administrator serving as the 14th president of Cornell University. Her scholarly work is centered on artificial intelligence, with a focus on automated planning and natural language processing. Prior to her presidency, she held prominent faculty and administrative roles at the University of Michigan, including provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

Early life and education

Martha Pollack earned her undergraduate degree in linguistics from Dartmouth College, where she graduated as the salutatorian of her class. She then pursued graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a Master of Science in computer science. She completed her Ph.D. in computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 under the supervision of Bonnie Webber, with her dissertation focusing on models of inference in natural language.

Academic career

Pollack began her academic career as an assistant professor in the Intelligent Systems Program at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1995, she joined the faculty of the University of Michigan as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. At Michigan, she held several key leadership positions, including dean of the School of Information and vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs. She was appointed provost and executive vice president for academic affairs in 2013, overseeing the university's Ann Arbor and Dearborn campuses as well as the University of Michigan Health System.

Presidency of Cornell University

Martha Pollack was inaugurated as the 14th president of Cornell University on April 17, 2017, succeeding interim president Hunter R. Rawlings III. Her tenure has emphasized expanding the university's global engagement, including strengthening the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island and initiatives at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. She has also prioritized initiatives in sustainability, leading to the development of the Cornell Climate Action Plan, and championed efforts to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion across the Ithaca campus and Weill Cornell Medicine. During her presidency, Cornell University launched its "To Do the Greatest Good" fundraising campaign.

Research and publications

Pollack's research in artificial intelligence has significantly contributed to the fields of automated planning and natural language processing. Her early work developed formal models for recognizing and supporting the plans of other agents, known as plan recognition. She has published extensively in premier venues such as the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. Her later research examined the design of cognitive assistive technology for older adults and individuals with cognitive impairments, collaborating with researchers in gerontology and human-computer interaction.

Awards and honors

For her scholarly contributions, Martha Pollack was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2007 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010. She is also a past recipient of a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. In 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has served on the board of directors for the Computing Research Association and on advisory committees for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Category:American computer scientists Category:Cornell University faculty Category:University of Michigan faculty Category:Presidents of Cornell University