Qiaozhu Mei, associate professor in the School of Information and the College of Engineering, has been named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his scientific contributions to computing. Mei is one of 43 members of the association recognized in 2017 for their outstanding contributions to the field of computing and information technology.

"Professor Mei is a prolific and influential researcher in text mining, information retrieval, and health informatics who has made significant contributions in three areas: temporal text mining, semi-supervised learning and ranking of unlabeled data to do clustering and classification, and big data graph representations and changes over time," said Paul Resnick, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs at the School of Information. "A distinguishing feature of Professor Mei’s work is a focus on real-world problems and data."

“Computing technology is becoming an increasingly dominant force in our daily lives and is transforming society at every level,” explains ACM President Vicki L. Hanson. “In naming a new roster of Distinguished Members each year, ACM underscores that the innovations which improve our lives do not come about by accident, but rather are the result of the hard work, inspiration and creativity of leading professionals in the field. We honor the 2017 class of ACM Distinguished Members for the essential role their accomplishments play in how we live and work.”

The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of the ACM worldwide membership based on professional experience as well as significant achievements in the computing field. The ACM Distinguished Member program was initiated in 2006 and recognizes those members with at least 15 years of professional experience who have made significant accomplishments or achieved a significant impact on the computing field.

The Association for Computing Machinery is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges.

- UMSI News Service