Barbara Simons

Barbara Simons is an American computer scientist who was president of the Association for Computing Machinery from 1998 to 2000. Born in Boston in 1941, she earned her doctorate in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981 and then spent 17 years in IBM research and development, where her work covered compiler optimization, scheduling theory, algorithm analysis and design, and clock synchronization. In 1993 she founded the ACM US Public Policy Committee, known as USACM, and co-chaired it for nine years. Her attention moved from research to technology policy, and since the early 2000s she has been one of the most prominent critics of paperless electronic voting. She serves on the board of the Verified Voting Foundation and co-wrote the book Broken Ballots with Douglas W. Jones. She is also known for helping start a reentry program for women and minorities in computer science at Berkeley.