"The Association for Computing Machinery awards the 2000 Outstanding Contribution to ACM award to Dr. Hal Berghel for significant and wide-ranging contributions on behalf of the ACM Membership and Publication Boards, ACM Technology Outreach Programs, and the ACM Distinguished Lectureship Series.
Dr. Berghel chairs the ACM Technology Outreach Program and Electronic Communities Committees, and serves on the ACM Publications Board. He is also Vice-Chair of the ACM Member Activities Board.
Technology Outreach Program:
With ACM's growing international presence, Dr. Berghel developed a number of
programs for Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. He began the Technology
Outreach Program (TOP) for Mexico and Central America in 1995 with Prof. Jesus
Flores Morfin. TOP has involved supporting computing conferences in Mexico with
ACM Distinguished Lecturers for numerous Computing and IT conferences. He also
instituted student chapters in Latin America, providing all the research, publications
and networking benefits of the ACM to undergraduates. Australia and New Zealand
were next. After a "good will tour" to many area universities, Berghel's TOP
work resulted in establishing ACM student chapters, and laying groundwork for
the Australian/New Zealand ACM Distinguished Lectureship.
Research and Writing:
Dr. Berghel is currently Professor and Chair of Computer Science at the University
of Nevada at Las Vegas. He has held a variety of research and administrative
positions in industry and academia during his 25-year computing career. His
current research focuses on Internet and Web technologies, interactive and participatory
computing environments, including the design of virtual communities and electronic
information management. His research work appears frequently in a variety of
scientific and technical publications."