The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to announce that one of its newest council members, Manish Parashar, won the 2024 Computing Research Association (CRA) Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding contributions to computing research.
Currently a professor and director at the University of Utah’s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, Parashar has also served as the Office Director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure.
The CRA Distinguished Service Award recognizes significant contributions in areas like government affairs, professional societies, and leadership. Parashar’s work, particularly in cyberinfrastructure, has had a global impact. His career includes pioneering autonomic computing, advancing translational computer science, and leading major initiatives at NSF.
Notably, during his time at NSF, Parashar played a key role in creating the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium and worked on establishing a National Strategic Computing Reserve. He also co-chaired the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force, which aims to democratize access to AI research resources.
“Receiving the Distinguished Service Award from CRA is a tremendous honor to receive this award. CRA is the steward of the computer science research community with a mission to develop a vision that can effect change benefiting computing research and society,” Parashar said. “I have always benefited from the many opportunities that CRA has created and interactions across the broad CRA community. I am also humbled by the distinguished leaders who have received this award before me.”
Parashar believes computer science research has the potential to enable researchers to tackle some of the most important challenges in science and society. This potential has driven his professional career.
“I have tried to impact science and society through my research, teaching, and service, and this goal continues to drive me to take on service roles,” he said. “I have been lucky to have had opportunities to serve at different levels, including university/institutional, state/regional, national and community levels.”
What’s next for Parashar? He plans to continue his goal of impacting science and society in areas of democratizing science by reducing barriers to access to research cyberinfrastructure and advancing translational computer science research approaches and practices.
CRA also acknowledged this honor, read more on his accomplishments here.
