The search is over! This afternoon, Cornell’s Presidential Search Committee named Martha E. Pollack as the newest university president. Pollack will take her place as the 14th President of Cornell University on April 17th, 2017. Until then, here’s a few fun facts that you should know about your new president:
1She’s an Ivy League grad herself.
Granted it wasn’t Cornell, but Dartmouth and UPenn are pretty good schools too. Pollack completed her undergraduate studies in Linguistics at Dartmouth, then headed on over to the University of Pennsylvania to receive her MSE and PhD in Computer and Information Science. Needless to say, she’s a smart cookie.
2She’s only Cornell’s second female president.
Pollack’s appointment marks only the second time a woman has served as Cornell’s president, the first being our late President Garrett. Given President Garrett’s tragically short time here due to her battle with colon cancer, it seems fitting that another woman would be chosen as her successor.
3She’s into robots.
Well, something like that. Pollack is an expert in the Artificial Intelligence field, her research concentrating in automated planning, natural-language processing, temporal reasoning, and constraint satisfaction. Her work has particularly been involved with the design of intelligent systems to help those with cognitive impairment. We don’t really know what all that means, but it sounds smart. Yeah, women in tech!
4She’s a former professor herself
Prior to serving as Provost at Michigan, Pollack spent several years as a professor there. She taught as an Information Professor, and as a Computer Science and Engineering Professor as well. Prior to that, she was a Computer Science and Intelligent Systems Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. In total, she bring some 25 years of teaching experience to the table!
With so much to offer, it’s clear that with President Pollack, our university will be in great hands. Congratulations, President Pollack, and welcome to the Cornell community!
