[AISWorld] 2021 ER Fellows Announced

[Parsons, Jeffrey]

[Sent on behalf of Juan Trujillo]

On behalf of the 2021 ER Fellow Award Selection Committee, I am very proud to let the research community know that both Prof. Carson Woo and Prof. Jacky Akoka have been chosen as the recipients of the 2021 ER Fellow awards.

The ER Fellows Award is an honor given to selected individuals in the conceptual-modeling community in recognition of their contributions to ER research, ER education, and ER community service. Further info can be found on https://conceptualmodeling.org/ER_Fellows.html.

Both candidates showed outstanding contributions in all the key dimensions required to become an ER Fellow, and the members of the Selection Committee agreed and voted unanimously to select both candidates as the 2021 ER Fellow recipients.

Carson's research in conceptual modeling focuses on modeling roles and their interactions for various purposes and business areas. Thus, research oriented to transfer technology and the application of modeling techniques to solve real problems in a very wide range of scenarios in industry is one of his strongest contributions to the area. He has been Principal Investigator of several research and transfer technology projects, producing outstanding results not only in research but also in transfer technology. One of his latest contributions in this area was to transfer the rights of some of his prototype software to a UBC (University of British Columbia) spin-off company, ModiViz, of which Carson is a co-founder and co-owner. Carson has outstanding contributions in the area of Conceptual Modeling and has research papers published in the main top journals and conferences related to the Conceptual Modeling area such as ACM Trans. Manag. Inf. Syst., DSS or RE. Carson has advised many Master and PhD students and has serviced to the Conceptual Modeling community by organizing and chairing many different workshops and symposiums related to Conceptual Modeling, as well as serving as Chair of the ER Steering Committee (2019-2020) and ER conference Co-Chair for 2010.

Jacky's research and his contributions can be summarized in four major characteristics: (i) the consideration of the diversity of information systems over several decades (relational databases, multidimensional databases, graph databases, expert systems, decision support systems, knowledge-based systems, accounting information systems, data warehouses, etc.), (ii) a remarkable link made through conceptual modeling, (iii) a contribution based on design science, and (iv) a pioneering approach to the conceptual modeling of decision support systems and knowledge-based systems. That is, conceptual modeling has been the cornerstone of his research throughout his whole career. He has published over 200 conference and journal papers on information and decision systems in top journals such as IEEE Transactions con Computers, DSS, CS&I between others, obtaining a high number of citations. Jacky has advised many Master and PhD students in the area of conceptual modeling. Jacky has served as Program Co-Chair of many conferences, including the Conceptual Modeling (ER) in 1999; and also served as President of the Association Information et Management (AIM) for four years, as well as having different academic responsibilities in his university. Lately, Jacky has an extensive experience in consulting and being a Scientific Advisor of companies, where the modeling of Information System is the cornerstone.

The official award ceremony will be held in ER 2021 at St John's, NL, Canada.


Juan C. Trujillo
2021 ER Fellow Award Selection Committee Chair