Marcelo Arenas is honored as a Fellow of the ACM – Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data

January, 2025. The Association for Computing Machinery, the most prestigious association in the field of computing and information technology worldwide, recognized Marcelo Arenas, academic at the UC Department of Computer Science and the UC Institute of Mathematical and Computational Engineering, and IMFD researcher, as a Fellow of the ACM. This award recognizes the top 1% of ACM members for their contributions to computer science and technology, based on their track record, quality, and the impact of their research.

"I am very happy and pleased to receive this recognition, as this organization is the most important in the world of computing, and this is the highest honor it bestows on its members, "says Marcelo Arenas, who receives this appointment for his significant contributions in the area of data management fundamentals.

"Computer technology has had a tremendous impact on the way we live and work today,"said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. "The ACM Fellows program honors the creativity and hard work of ACM members whose specific achievements drive innovation and enable broader advances. By announcing a new class of Fellows each year, we celebrate the impact of some of the pioneers in our community and highlight the many technical areas of computing in which they work." The 55 selected for 2024 are outstanding ACM members whose achievements were selected by their peers for enabling the computing technologies we use today.

Only five Latin Americans: three are IMFD

With this recognition, Arenas becomes the third IMFD researcher to achieve this distinction: the first ACM Fellow from Latin America (2009) is Ricardo Baeza Yates, current Director of Research at Northeastern University's Experiential AI Institute. In 2023, the award highlighted the career and work of Gonzalo Navarro, an academic in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chile: all three are researchers at Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, and together with Luiz Andre Barroso (2010) and Carlos de Lucena (2013), both Brazilian researchers, they are part of the select group of five Latin American scientists who have received it.

For Juan , director of Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, "This recognition undoubtedly highlights Marcelo's work, which has been crucial for the development of both the IMFD and the field at the national and international levels. Furthermore, the fact that three of the five Latin American researchers who have received this recognition are part of the IMFD fills us with pride and confirms the direction we have taken at the institute, always with collaboration and excellence as our objectives."

"Looking at the research we conducted in Chile, it is clear that we have a niche, in which Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Gonzalo Navarro , and fellow IMFD researcher Leopoldo Bertossi played an important role in our training . They were the ones who started forming groups that ended up working in very specific areas, such as databases, and in which we have managed to highlight the work being done in Chile at a global level," adds Arenas.

A career dedicated to computer science

Marcelo Arenas is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Mathematical and Computational Engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Former director of IMFD and the Semantic Web Research Center, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto (Canada) and his areas of interest are data management, applications of logic in computer science, and the semantic web. He has participated as a guest expert in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and according to Google Scholar, his articles have received 12,165 citations.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, bringing together educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address challenges in the field. ACM strengthens the collective voice of computing through strong leadership, the promotion of the highest standards, and the recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by offering opportunities for lifelong learning, professional development, and professional networking. TheACM Fellows Program, initiated in 1993, celebrates the exceptional contributions of outstanding members in the field of computing. These People helped to enlighten researchers, developers, professionals, and end users of information technology around the world. New ACM Fellows join a distinguished list of colleagues whom ACM and its members look to for guidance and leadership in computing and information technology.

The ACM has previously recognized Marcelo Arenas' work: in 2021, he was named a "Distinguished Member" of the ACM and highlighted the academic in its "People of ACM" section, which selects Association members whose scientific achievements have made a difference in the advancement of computing as a science and profession. In this interview, they highlighted Arenas' professional career and personal history.