Dr.  Laura M Haas

Dr. Laura Haas joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst in August 2017 as Dean of the College of Information and Computer Sciences, after a long career at IBM, where she was accorded the title IBM Fellow in recognition of her impact.  At the time of her retirement from IBM, she was Director of IBM Research’s Accelerated Discovery Lab (2011-2017), after serving as Director of Computer Science at IBM’s Almaden Research Center from 2005 to 2011.  She had worldwide responsibility for IBM Research’s exploratory science program from 2009 through 2013.  From 2001-2005, she led the Information Integration Solutions architecture and development teams in IBM's Software Group.  Previously, Dr. Haas was a research staff member and manager at Almaden.  She is best known for her work on the Starburst query processor, from which DB2 LUW was developed, on Garlic, a system which allowed integration of heterogeneous data sources, and on Clio, the first semi-automatic tool for heterogeneous schema mapping. She has received several IBM awards for Outstanding Innovation and Technical Achievement, an IBM Corporate Award for information integration technology, the Anita Borg Institute Technical Leadership Award, and the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovation Award.  Dr. Haas was Vice President of the VLDB Endowment Board of Trustees from 2004-2009, and served on the board of the Computing Research Association from 2007-2016 (vice chair 2009-2015); she currently serves on the National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (2013-2019). She is an ACM Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

• Data, Analytics, and the Dawn of the Cognitive Era of Computing.
  We are poised on the brink of a new era of computing, one in which computers will increasingly partner with people to improve our lives and enhance our ability to solve complex problems....
• Accelerating Data Discovery for Better Health
  The volumes of healthcare data are sky-rocketing, and new sources and types of patient, biology, medical and contextual information are proliferating; we can now get more data on patients and...
• Accelerating the Discovery of Insights from Data
  Today, businesses and scientists alike struggle to get to the value in their data. Their challenges include finding and gaining access to the data they need, “wrangling” the...
• Impact! Great Research, Great Scientists, Great Careers
   I have worked with researchers in both industry and academia over the course of my career, and helped many to grow their influence and stature.  This talk is a compilation of the best...
• The Power Behind the Throne: Information Integration in the Age of Data-Driven Discovery
  Integrating data has always been a challenge. The information management community has made great progress in tackling this challenge, both on the theory and the practice.  But in the...