Francine Berman

Francine Berman (born 7 February 1951) is an American computer scientist and a leader in digital data preservation and cyberinfrastructure. She studied at the University of Washington, where she earned her BA, MS and PhD. She later directed the San Diego Supercomputer Center and held the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair and a professorship in computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. From 2009 she served as vice president for research and professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2009 she was the inaugural recipient of the IEEE/ACM-CS Ken Kennedy Award for her leadership in national-scale cyberinfrastructure, and in 2004 Business Week called her the reigning teraflop queen. She became co-chair of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information in 2011 and joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2021 to establish a program in public interest technology.