Andrew Bernat, CRA Executive Director
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is sad to announce the retirement of CRA Executive Director Andrew Bernat. Bernat was instrumental in the development of the CCC — in October 2006, CRA responded to an NSF solicitation to establish a Computing Community Consortium. Bernat, working along with Daniel A Reed, Susan L Graham, Anita K Jones, and Edward D Lazowska submitted a proposal that was backed by explicit letters of support from 132 Ph.D.-granting academic programs, 16 leading corporations, 7 major national laboratories and research centers, and five professional societies in the field.
Since then, with Bernat working as an Ex-Officio member of the CCC’s Executive Committee, the CCC has grown into a self-sustaining committee of CRA with 20 council members who help to lead the CCC’s visioning programs.. Bernat’s guidance and expertise will be missed.
See the original retirement announcement from the Computing Research Association below.
After nearly 20 years at the helm of the Computing Research Association, Executive Director Andrew Bernat announced he will retire from his position as of September 1.
Bernat joined CRA in 2002 and under his leadership the association has seen a dramatic, positive transformation, more than tripling in size and launching significant new efforts in research visioning, widening participation, and postgraduate support, while remaining the organization of record for computing research issues in Washington policy circles. During his tenure, CRA has:
- seen its financial position strengthen significantly. Expenditures have increased from under $2 million to more than $7.5 million and the size of reserve funds has increased from $600K to more than $3 million;
- expanded the scope of initiatives and increased organizational support – increased staffing from 7 to 23 full time employees;
- founded the Computing Community Consortium, launched two iterations of the CIFellows programs, expanded its widening participation programs, established the Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline and the CRA Education Committee, and nurtured strong relationships with affiliates and partners in the computing community.
Bernat’s retirement will bring to a close a remarkable career. In addition to leading CRA as CRA executive director, Bernat serves as Secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) section on Information, Computing and Communication. He was honored as a AAAS Fellow in 2018.
Before joining CRA, Bernat was a founding member and chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at El Paso (spending 20 years there). He also received the CRA A. Nico Habermann Award in 1997 and spent two years as an NSF Program Director. Bernat has some 70 refereed publications, roughly equally in disciplinary research and in computing education, a large number of presentations and in excess of $25 million in externally funded activities. He received a B.S. in physics from Harvey Mudd College and a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Outside of work, he is an accomplished climber, and enjoys metal machining, hiking, SCUBA as well as spending time with his family.
CRA recently kicked off its search for an equally passionate executive director who will lead the association into its next exciting chapter. A search committee has been formed, and CRA has engaged the services of Isaacson Miller to help with the process. To nominate someone for consideration for the position or if you have general inquiries, please visit this website. A full position profile and advertisement are being drafted. Both will be available in the next few weeks and circulated widely, so stay tuned!
