Nico Habermann Wins ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award

Personal, News

The newly established ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award recognizes an educator who has “made significant contributions to, and impact on, the field of software engineering with his/her accomplishments as a teacher, mentor, researcher, author, and/or policy maker.” Well, last month, in an absolutely wonderful gesture by the software engineering community, Nico Habermann was named, posthumously, a winner of the inaugural award. (Laurie Williams of North Carolina State was also a recipient of the award.)

Nico was a faculty member, department head, and founding dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. I think about him a lot. I still remember, vividly, when I first met him during my job interview. He challenged me by expressing doubts about the value of my research area (programming languages), and yet he not only hired me, he was instrumental in building up what is arguably the strongest research group in the area, anchored by Turing Award winner, Dana Scott. From 1987 until 1993, his support for my career was always strong and obvious, and yet he had a startling directness and willingness to engage in honest intellectual debate and disagreement. Thinking back, I still find his approach refreshing. Of the many people at CMU who influenced my career, none did so as much as Nico did.

Today, as someone following in Nico’s footsteps as CMU CS department head, I often find myself asking, “What would Nico do in a situation like this?” His focus on building solid foundations for people’s careers, promoting transparency and frankness, and showing real concern for the greater cause of computing research and education, are all things that I have drawn from Nico. I still feel, at times, deep sadness at Nico’s sudden passing in 1993. But for sure I was extremely lucky, and am now a much better person, for having known and worked for A. Nico Habermann.

Peter Lee @ June 19, 2009