The Computing Research Association

^{∫ archives ∫}A. Nico Habermann Award

CRA makes this award, usually annually, to a person who has made outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community. This award recognizes work in areas of government affairs, educational programs, professional societies, public awareness, and leadership that has a major impact on advancing these groups in the computing research community. Recognized contributions can be focused directly at the research level or at its immediate precursors, namely students at the undergraduate or graduate levels.

¹⁹⁹⁸Bryant York

1998 Habermann Award Awardee Associate Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University

Dr. Bryant York has been selected as the recipient of the 1998 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award. This award is made in recognition of Dr. York’s outstanding contributions, spanning many years, to underrepresented groups within the computing research community on both the local and national level.

Dr. York is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University. During his academic career, he has initiated and contributed to many projects involving minorities, women, and the disabled. In 1989 he organized an NSF-sponsored workshop on “Computers and Persons with Disabilities”. Upon joining NSF in 1990 as a rotator, he supported several projects for improving accessibility to science for the blind. At the same time he worked with the director of the Clearinghouse for Computer Accommodation of the General Services Administration and the director of the National Institute of Disability Research and Rehabilitation on impacts of the Americans for Disabilities Act on NSF programs. He subsequently co-edited a special section of the Communications of the ACM on Computers and Persons with Disabilities and moderated an NSF workshop on Access to the NII for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities.

For a number of years Dr. York has been active in encouraging minority students to pursue careers in science. For the past eight years he has served as a mentor for minority high school and undergraduate students in New England; he is a member of the curriculum planning committee and volunteers at the Young Achievers School in Roxbury, MA. He also helped to wire the school during NetDay96. He has chaired the ACM Committee on Minorities, and an NSF-sponsored workshop “Increasing Participation of Minorities in the Computing Disciplines.” While at NSF, he conducted a six-week computer-programming contest at Benjamin Banneker High School, a predominantly black high school in Washington, DC and in 1991 Dr. York received NSF’s prestigious Equal Opportunity Prize.

Dr. York’s service to the minority computer science community has been recognized by ADMI (Association of Departments of Computer Information Science & Engineering at Minority Institutions, ) which presented him with awards in 1991 and 1997. He has helped ADMI in important forums during the organization’s infancy and has served as an ADMI consultant to minority universities for grant proposal development.

Dr. York earned a Bachelors degree in Mathematics at Brandeis University in 1967, a Masters degree in Management from the Sloan School of Management, M.I.T in 1971, a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1976, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1981.

His current research interests are in the area of parallel and scientific computing.