Fil Menczer
Fil Menczer, distinguished professor of informatics and computer science at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, has been named an Association for Computing Machinery Fellow.
Being named an ACM Fellow recognizes the top 1 percent of ACM members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology, and/or outstanding service to the ACM and the larger computing community. Menczer, who previously was recognized as an ACM Distinguished Scientist, focuses on the spread of online misinformation and develops tools to detect and counter social media manipulation.
“The award means a lot because my research is not in a mainstream area of computer science,” Menczer said. “My work is applied and interdisciplinary, at the boundary between data science, AI, network science, web science, and computational social science. So, the ACM Fellowship is both a recognition of the breadth of computing research and of the impact that interdisciplinary research can have.”
Menczer is the director of the Observatory on Social Media at IU and is the former director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the McDonnell Foundation, and the Knight Foundation among others, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and a host of other high-profile outlets.
Menczer has made seminal contributions to multiple fields at the frontier of computing research in the last 20 years: web search and data mining, network science, social computing, computational social science, and social media analytics. His best-known work has laid the foundation for our current understanding of how online social networks and social media can be manipulated by malicious actors and the harms that can result from these vulnerabilities.
He also was awarded the Indiana University Bicentennial Medal, which honors distinguished and distinctive service in support of Indiana University’s mission as a public university, in 2020.
“All of the research recognized by this award was done by and with my amazing students, of whom I am extremely proud,” Menczer said. “I hope this honor will work as a recognition of their hard work and brilliant intellect. I also hope it will help attract to this area of research more bright students with a diversity of talents and life experiences. We need them to ‘fix’ the web!”
The ACM announced its 2021 Fellows Jan. 13.
“Being named an ACM Fellow is a tremendous honor, one for which Fil is richly deserving,” said Dennis Groth, interim dean of the Luddy School. “Fil’s groundbreaking work is helping researchers around the world understand and combat one of the biggest challenges faced in our increasingly connected society. This honor is one more tangible sign of the impact our faculty at the Luddy School make in so many critical fields.”