An Award For Ellen Zegura

Ellen Zegura was just honored with the Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award. The Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award recognizes outstanding achievement in teaching, research, and service. It is the highest honor given to a Georgia Tech professor.

Created in 1984 by the Class of 1934 in observance of its 50th reunion, the award is presented to an active professor who has made significant, long-term contributions—contributions that have brought widespread recognition to the professor, to their school, and to the Institute. The GaTech story on Ellen has many delightful personal details touching all aspects of her vocation.

Two other people in our line have been so honored recently: Jim Foley from computing and Robin Thomas from mathematics. As a past Tech professor I knew both of them well. I’ve also known other past winners of this great award. Congrats to Ellen.

Voting Too

Zegura is getting this award for many reasons, but one prominent reason is her research with two other top Georgia Tech professors—Michael Best and Rich DeMillo on voting safety. Best is a professor of international affairs and interactive computing at Georgia Tech and has worked globally on election systems monitoring for more than 15 years. DeMillo is the chair of the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at Georgia Tech and has also worked on voting for years.

The trio wrote an opinion piece on elections in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. Also see this for comments by Tech’s Secure and Safe Elections Research Group.

Here are some of the papers this was based on—Rich was a co-author of the first, Ellen and Michael on the others:

• Ballot-Marking Devices—DeMillo

• A First Look at “Eyes on the Vote”—Best and Zegura

• Lessons in Social Election Monitoring—Best and Zegura

Open Problems

Again congrats to Ellen on being honored.