Connectionists: Fwd: Scientific Integrity, the 2021 Turing Lecture, etc

[Dietterich, Thomas]

Pierre,

Regarding leadership turnover, with the exception of Terry Sejnowski, the makeup of the NIPS Foundation board turns over on a regular basis, as there are term limits for all Board members. The Board consists of previous program chairs. The IMLS Board has had term limits and regular turnover since its founding, and its members are elected. Both organizations are always seeking volunteers for the many tasks involved in running the conference, and future program chairs are drawn from the people who have served in these positions. I encourage the readers of this list who are interested to contact the members of the conference organizing committees and express your interest. 

I have long sought for mechanisms to broaden the set of candidates considered for leadership positions, editorial boards, etc. When people rely on their own professional networks, this naturally limits the set of names that get considered. And this combines with the "founder effect" that still exists because the field was nucleated in North America. Nonetheless, I think the machine learning community is very open compared to other fields. That said, we could do much better!

--Tom

Thomas G. Dietterich, Distinguished Professor Emeritus
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science                        
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