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Barbara Simons
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Barbara Bluestein Simons (born January 26, 1941) is a computer scientist and the past president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is the founder and former co-Chair of USACM, the ACM U.S. Public Policy Council. Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Simons is a Ph. D graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and spent her early career working as an IBM researcher. Her main areas of research were compiler optimization, scheduling theory and algorithm analysis and design.

Starting in 2002, Simons has worked in politics at the forefront of the technology regulation, where she advocates for the end of electronic voting. She subsequently serves as the chairperson of the Verified Voting Foundation and coauthored a book on the flaws electronic voting entitled Broken Ballots, with Douglas W. Jones.

Contents

 * 1Early Life
 * 2Career
 * 2.1981-1998IBM
 * 2.221998-?ACM
 * 2.22?-?VerifiedVoting
 * 3Work on voting technology policy
 * 4Subsequent Involvement
 * 5Published Books/ Works
 * 4Awards and honors
 * 5References
 * 6External links

Early life
Simons was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. In high school, she developed a passion for math and science while taking A.P. Math classes. She attended Wellesley College for a year, before moving to Berkeley, California in 1959 to resume her undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she married James Harris Simons, an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. At the beginning of her junior year she gave birth to a daughter, Liz Simons, and began attending Berkeley part time. At the end of her junior year, she dropped out to become a mother and housewife for housewife for the next nine years. In this time she decided to pursue a profession in Computer Programming, and began taking computer science classes part-time, before enrolling in graduate school at Stony Brook University. After a year of graduate school there, Harris Simons and her divorced in 1974. Following the divorce, she transferred back to University of California, Berkeley, where she concentrated on a programming challenge called "scheduling". In 1981, she received her Ph. D in Computer Science. She is one of few women in U.C. Berkeley;s doctoral program, and is the only woman to have received the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the U.C. Berkeley's College of Engineering.

-Simons is co-founder of the Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WiCSE)

Career
 1981- 1998: IBM 

After receiving her Ph. D from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981, Simons joined the Research Division of IBM at IBM's San Jose Research Center.

There, she focused her research on compiler optimization, algorithm analysis, scheduling theory, and fault tolerant distributed computing. Her work on clock synchronization won an IBM Research Division Award. In 1992, she began working IBMS's Applications Development Technology Institute as a senior programmer,and subsequently as a senior technology adviser for IBM Global Services. Over her career, she became more focused on technology policy and regulations. Before she left IBM, she had been promoted to Senior Technology Advisor. In 1998, she retired retired from IBM. She received an IBM Research Division Award for her research on clock synchronization.

1993-2002: ACM

Simons served as President of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society from 1998-2000. She was elected President after leaving IBM, when her career focus shifted to the politics of technology legislation. Prior to becoming ACM President, Simons founded ACM's US Public Policy Committee (USACM) in 1993. She co-chaired this committee and the ACM Committee for Scientific Freedom and Human Rights for nearly 10 years. As President, she co-chaired the ACM study of statewide databases of registered voters in 1999 under President Clinton, called Voter Registration Databases 2000-2002. In 1999 as ACM President, she was elected Secretary of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP). In 2001 after her Presidency, she was honored with ACM’s Outstanding Contribution Award. She is still a Fellow of ACM and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Verified Voting

Since 2008, Simons has served on the Board of Directors of VerifiedVoting.org, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that was founded to advocate for legislation that promotes the safest, most transparent voting in the hopes of verifying our future election outcomes.

Work on voting technology policy
Since 2002, Simons has been a major voice warning of the potential dangers of using unverifiable technology in voting. In 2001 she was a member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting under President Clinton, and helped produce a report on Internet Voting. She subsequently served on the President’s Export Council’s Subcommittee on Encryption and on the Information Technology-Sector of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion. She has testified before both the U.S. and state legislatures and at government sponsored hearings, on cryptography, medical privacy, authentication for access to online records, and intellectual property on the Internet. She also participated on the Security Peer Review Group for the US Department of Defense’s Internet voting project (SERVE) and co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of SERVE because of security concerns 2004.

She is specifically a critic of unauditable electronic voting, and particularly of electronic voting machines. She is credited as a key actor in changing the League of Women Voter's opinion on paperless voting. At their June 2004 convention she helped reverse their pro-electronic voting policy. In 2008, she was appointed by Senator Harry Reid to the U.S Election Assistance Commission Board of Advisors. With fellow computer scientist Douglas Jones, she also co-authored a book on voting machines in 2012, titled “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?”. Following this, in July 2015 she co-authored a report of the U.S. Vote Foundation entitled The Future of Voting: End-to-End Verifiable Internet Voting. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of VerifiedVoting.org, where she works with other computer scientists to promote accountable, auditable voting practices.

Subsequent Involvement
Simons co-founded the Reentry Program for Women and Minorities in the Computer Science Department at U.C. Berkeley. She is also on the Boards of the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) and the Berkeley Foundation for Opportunities in Information Technology (BFOIT), which are both groups that work to increase participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computer science.

In 2005 Simons became the first woman to receive the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering of U.C. Berkeley.

She is a member of the Board of Directors at the U.C. Berkeley Engineering Fund, the Math/Science Network, Public Knowledge. the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and sits on the Advisory Boards of the Oxford Internet Institute and Zeroknowledge.

She is a member of the National Workshop of Internet Voting, and now serves as Professor at Stanford University. In addition, she has written several published works and technical papers and holds several patents.  

Awards and honors

 * CPSR Norbert Wiener Award for Professional and Social Responsibility in Computing (1992)
 * Science featured her in a special edition on women in science (1992)
 * ACM Fellow (1993)
 * American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow (1993)
 * Named by Open Computing as one of the top 100 women in computing (1995)
 * Selected by CNET as one of 26 Internet "Visionaries" (1995)
 * Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award (1998)
 * IBM Research Division Award (1998)
 * U.C. Berkeley Computer Science Department Distinguished Alumnus Award in Computer Science and Engineering (2000)
 * ACM Outstanding Contribution Award (2002)
 * Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award (2004)
 * University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (2005)
 * U.C. Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award (2005)
 * U.S. Election Assistance Commission Board of Advisors (2008)

Major info about Barbara Simons:

-"Barbara Simons, PhD, ex-IBM researcher; former President, “ACM” (Association for Computing Machinery), and Electronic Voting Expert ". Chairperson of the Board of “Verified Voting”, co-author of Broken Ballots

-She is specialized in compiler optimization, algorithm analysis and design, and scheduling theory; she holds several patents and written or co-written various technical papers" what? which ones? Include in career.

--her current interest is with Technology Regulation, and her involvement in its early development.

- "Coauthored a book on the flaws electronic voting entitled Broken Ballots, with Douglas W. Jones.

- I also will add to her main areas of research, her involvement and interest in politics, particularly with electronic voting.

- I will also add how she teaches at Stanford

Drafting my Article: (3/12)

Improving an existing article: Barbara Simons
 * What's missing?
 * In the lead, I will add that she worked for IBM and that she currently serves on the Board of Verified Voting. I will also add along with this, is that her current interest is with Technology Regulation, and her involvement in its early development. I will also rephrase the last sentence to "Coauthored a book on the flaws electronic voting entitled Broken Ballots, with Douglas W. Jones. I also will add to her main areas of research, her involvement and interest in politics, particularly with electronic voting. I will also specific that USACM is actually the Association for Computational Machinery, and that she became President after leaving IBM and shifted it to have a focus on the politics of technology legislation. I will also add how she teaches at Stanford The lead as of now, fails to provide a clear summary of all of Barbara Simons' involvement, failing to mention many. It fails to clearly communicate why she is important.
 * Current Lead: "Barbara Bluestein Simons (born January 26, 1941) is a computer scientist and past president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is founder and former Chair of USACM, the ACM U.S. Public Policy Committee. Her main areas of research are compiler optimization and scheduling theory. Together with Douglas W. Jones, Simons co-authored a book on electronic voting entitled Broken Ballots."
 * In the Infobox, I will add her institutions from just IBM to USACM. I will also add her age next to her birthdate. I will also add her place of birth to be Boston, MA. I will also add her 3 children (which include Nat Simons).
 * In the body of the article, I will separate "Life and Career" into first "Personal life" and then "Career". I will add "Early Life and Education" before these two as well. I will add sub headings for IBM, ACM, detailing her specific work under her "Career" section and involvement at those places and add the specifics of her work with Voter Verified to the section "Work on voting technology". I will also include in this section, information about her TED Talk "Why Can't We Vote Online". These specifics are currently missing from the article. Everything is too broad currently and poorly organized. It lacks the specific facts that exist, making the article such a stub.
 * Finally for references, I will add all the references from my Bibliography, which I will use when editing the article. These include:
 * https://www.msri.org/general_events/21556
 * Simon's book: Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?
 * https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/guardian-of-the-vote/544155/
 * http://ethw.org/Oral-History:Barbara_Simons
 * https://www.eac.gov/about/help-america-vote-act/
 * http://engineering.columbia.edu/files/engineering/Simons_10-19-16-updated.pdf
 * What are ways to improve?
 * Copy edit. I need to not only add a lot of information from my sources, and reorganize the article entirely, but also copy edit the existing material. It needs more clarity. It needs to be to the point, factual, unbiased, and in plain language.
 * Add references. I need to attribute my sources and cite all my sources for my facts, when I add them in.
 * More sources. I need to attribute the current work to more sources, as a few of the claims are not currently supported by citations.

Finalizing my Topic and Finding my Source: (2/23)

What I plan to contribute to a selected article: A list of sources: Works cited:
 * Adding more information to her 'Life and Career' section.
 * Creating a new section for just 'Career', with subsections of the various stages of her Career and her multiple places and involvement of employment.
 * Adding more specific and detailed information across the board.
 * Adding a section for her involvement in Verified Voting.
 * Including more about her fight against Paperless voting machines past the 2000 Presidential Election. Especially with the Help America Vote Act and her book.
 * Add more citations and links.
 * Copy edit to improve grammar and clarity. Make more concise and specific.
 * Uphold the unbiased tone of it currently.
 * https://www.msri.org/general_events/21556
 * Simon's book: Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?
 * https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/guardian-of-the-vote/544155/
 * http://ethw.org/Oral-History:Barbara_Simons
 * https://www.eac.gov/about/help-america-vote-act/
 * http://engineering.columbia.edu/files/engineering/Simons_10-19-16-updated.pdf

"Hacking the Election?" Columbia University Data Science, www.engineering.columbia.edu/files/engineering/simons

“Help America Vote Act.” U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), www.eac.gov/about/help-america-vote-act/.

Jones, Douglas W., and Barbara Simons. Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count? CSLI, 2012.

“Oral-History:Barbara Simons.” Oral-History:Barbara Simons - Engineering and Technology History Wiki, ethw.org/Oral-History:Barbara_Simons.

Leovy, Jill. “The Computer Scientist Who Prefers Paper.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 14 Nov. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/guardian-of-the-vote/544155/.

MSRI. “Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.” MSRI | Barbara Simons --- Internet Voting: Wishful Thinking?, www.msri.org/general_events/21556.

Choosing Possible Topics:

1. 3-5 Possible Topics and Ways to Improve: 2. 2-3 Potential Topics: 3. Notes to Improve each: Article Evaluation: "Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections" Coachella 2020 Lineup:
 * Loomio- add information, add more sources about and more detail, make more specific
 * Sam Altman- add more detail, make more specific, need to copy edit
 * Y Combinator- add citations and links to the Nonprofit and controversies
 * PopVox- Add more to the history and what it does, make less dense
 * Marci Harris- improve clarity, grammar, and add citations
 * 1) Loomio
 * 2) PopVox
 * 3) Sam Altman
 * 1) Add more information and citations under 'Projects' section. Add more to it's use, application, and include a section about e-Democracy. Copy edit it for grammar and clarity.
 * 2) Add more links and citations. Separate the info into more specific sections, i.e. from just 'Functions'. Make the information more specified to each subsection.
 * 3) Add more citations and information on the biography, as there are many information gaps currently. Add more on all sections of his involvement and how he got involved in Y Combinator.
 * This article is relevant and thorough.
 * It is for the most part neutral, but there are hints of liberal bias or anti-Trump sentiment in how it frames Trump.
 * The citations are good, and the link works.
 * While each fact was from a reliable source, from the Department of Homeland Security to The Post, journalists inherently have a liberal bias. Thus, while the sources are neutral in theory, the reality is there is some preexisting bias at play with journalists and sources like The Post since media in our time is evolving into more popular-press than unanimous and unbiased.
 * It's all up to date, besides adding that Trump wanted to fire Mueller.
 * On the talk page, there is a lot of dispute over how to represent the last paragraph in the Social Media section.
 * It is the interest of multiple WikiProjects.

Coachella 2020 headliners will include: Alt-J, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a Jimi Hendrix hologram.