The chair of Tandon’s Computer Science and Engineering department takes the top spot on the masthead of an ACM journal

Leonard J. Shustek Professor of Computer Science Martín Farach-Colton, who chairs Tandon’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering was recently named the editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing, one of the Association for Computing Machinery’s core peer-reviewed journals.

The publication is meant to function as a forum for novel and innovative work on all aspects of parallel computing, including foundational and theoretical aspects, systems, languages, architectures, tools, and applications, and he is looking forward to expanding its purview even further. Parallel computing is evolving rapidly, he explains, with GPUs on increasing numbers of devices and the field growing in complexity. “We live in an age where parallel computing is everywhere,” he says. “Machine learning, scientific computing, even the games you play on your phone ... they all involve parallel computing.”

Farach-Colton — whose honors include fellowships from the ACM, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, IEEE, AAAS, and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, each of which has recognized his contributions to data structures and storage systems — was deemed a natural fit for the post, since his career, like the journal’s focus, spans theory and practical application.

“When the ACM search committee reached out, I was happy to accept,” he says, “and I hope to take the journal, which is already highly esteemed, to even greater heights.”