Martha Elizabeth Pollack (born August 27, 1958) is an American computer scientist who has served as the 14th president of

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

since April 2017. Previously, she served as the 14th provost and executive vice president for academic affairs of the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

from 2013 to 2017. Pollack's research specialty is

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

, where her contributions include works in planning, natural language processing, and

activity recognition Activity recognition aims to recognize the actions and goals of one or more agents from a series of observations on the agents' actions and the environmental conditions. Since the 1980s, this research field has captured the attention of several c ...

for cognitive assistance.Martha E. Pollack
, Office of the Provost, University of Michigan, an
Curriculum vitae
, both retrieved 2015-06-14. She also serves on the board of directors of IBM.

Education

Pollack completed her undergraduate studies in

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

, graduating in 1979. She earned master's and doctoral degrees in computer science from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, completing her Ph.D. in 1986 under the joint supervision of

Bonnie Webber Bonnie Lynn Nash-Webber (born August 30, 1946) is a computational linguist. She is an honorary professor of intelligent systems in the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC) at the University of Edinburgh. Education and car ...

and Barbara J. Grosz.

Career and research

Before joining the University of Michigan faculty in 2000, she worked at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

from 1985 to 1992, and was on the faculty of the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

from 1991 to 2000. She became dean of the School of Information at Michigan in 2007, Vice Provost in 2010, and Provost in 2013. She has also been program chair of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence in 1997, editor-in-chief of the ''

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research The ''Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research'' (''JAIR'') is an open access peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in all areas of artificial intelligence. History It was established in 1993 as one of the first scientific journa ...

'' from 2001 to 2005, and president of the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

from 2009 to 2010. Pollack was the winner of the 1991

IJCAI Computers and Thought Award The IJCAI Computers and Thought Award is presented every two years by the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), recognizing outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence. It was originally funded with royal ...

. She has been a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence since 1996, and of the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2012. She was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 2022. On November 14, 2016, the Cornell University Board of Trustees announced that they had unanimously elected her as

’s 14th president, with her presidency beginning on April 17, 2017. Pollack was officially inaugurated on August 25, 2017.

As President

Cornell University president Martha Pollack at 2021 Commencement

Martha Pollack has made significant changes to Greek Life on campus, including banning all hard alcohol from events, suspending chapters suspected of hazing, and requiring a full-time live-in advisor for each fraternity and sorority house. She has also introduced plans to improve mental health services on campus after widespread criticism of Cornell's culture and lack of support for students in need, and rejected calls from the

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel. Its objective is to pressure Israel to meet what the BDS movement describes as Israel's obligations ...

movement for Cornell to boycott investments in Israeli businesses.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pollack, Martha Elizabeth 1958 births Living people American computer scientists American women computer scientists Dartmouth College alumni University of Pittsburgh faculty University of Michigan faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Presidents of Cornell University University of Pennsylvania alumni People from Stamford, Connecticut Presidents of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Women heads of universities and colleges Natural language processing researchers Artificial intelligence researchers American women academics 21st-century American women