Greg Morrisett elected 2013 ACM fellow

Cambridge, Mass. – December 10, 2013 – J. Gregory Morrisett, Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been elected a 2013 Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

He was recognized "for contributions to mathematically-based methods for ensuring the efficient implementation and verification of practical programming languages." The 50 ACM Fellows selected this year from the world’s leading universities, corporations, and research labs have achieved advances in computing research and development that are accelerating the digital revolution and impacting every dimension of how we live, work, and play worldwide, the ACM said.

"We recognize these scientists and engineers, creators and builders, theorists and practitioners who are making a difference in our lives," said ACM President Vinton G. Cerf. "They’re enabling us to listen, learn, calculate, and communicate in ways that underscore the benefits of the digital age. Their advances have led to opportunities for improved healthcare, enhanced security, expanded interactions, and enriched lifestyles."

Morrisett's research has focused on programming language design and implementation as well as software security. He is best known for his work on developing type systems that guarantee strong safety and security properties for low-level languages, including typed intermediate compiler languages, typed assembly language, and Cyclone, a type-safe dialect of C. Many of Morrisett's graduate students who worked on these projects have gone on to academic careers at top computer science departments.

Morrisett is also faculty director of the Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) at SEAS. CRCS links Harvard's world-class computer scientists with economists, psychologists, legal scholars, ethicists, neuroscientists, and other academic colleagues across the University and throughout the world to address fundamental computational problems that cross disciplines. Together, they aim to create new, problem-solving technologies informed by societal constraints.

Morrisett has received a number of awards for his research on programming languages, type systems, and software security, including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (presented at the White House in 2000), an NSF Career Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. He served as Chief Editor for the Journal of Functional Programming, and as an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems and for Information Processing Letters. Morrisett has also served on the DARPA Information Science and Technology Study Group, Microsoft's Trusthworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, a National Academy study on software producibility, and the Fortify Technical Advisory Board.

He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Richmond in 1989, and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in 1995.

Morrisett has been very active in the ACM community, serving as program chair, general chair, or committee member for a number of conferences. He has also served on the ACM SIGPLAN Executive Committee as a Member at Large and as the general chair of the ACM International Symposium on Memory Management.

ACM will formally recognize the 2013 Fellows at its annual Awards Banquet on June 21, 2014, in San Francisco. Additional information about the ACM 2013 Fellows, as well as previous ACM Fellows and award winners is available on the ACM Awards site.