19 Facts About Barbara Simons

Barbara Bluestein Simons was born on January 26,1941 and is an American computer scientist and the former president of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Barbara Simons is the founder and former co-chair of USACM, the ACM US Public Policy Council.

Barbara Simons subsequently serves as the chairperson of the Verified Voting Foundation and coauthored a book on the flaws of electronic voting entitled Broken Ballots, with Douglas W Jones.

Barbara Simons was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Barbara Simons attended Wellesley College for a year, before moving to California in 1959 to resume her undergraduate education at Berkeley.

Barbara Simons transferred back to Berkeley for the remainder of graduate school, where she concentrated on studying scheduling theory and helped co-found the Women in Computer Science and Engineering club.

Barbara Simons received a Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from Berkeley's College of Engineering.

Barbara Simons took early retirement from IBM in 1998 after spending 17 years with the company.

Barbara Simons joined ACM when her career focus shifted from computing research to the politics of technology legislation.

Barbara Simons co-chaired this committee along with the ACM Committee for Scientific Freedom and Human Rights for 9 years.

Barbara Simons is still a Fellow of ACM and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Since 2008, Barbara Simons has served on the board of directors of the Verified Voting Foundation, a non-partisan and non-profit organization that advocates for legislation to promote the safest and most transparent voting.

Barbara Simons serves on the boards of the Coalition to Diversify Computing and the Berkeley Foundation for Opportunities in Information Technology, both which promote minorities to learn and work in computing.

Barbara Simons subsequently served on the President's Export Council's Subcommittee on Encryption, as well as on the Information Technology-Sector of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion.

Barbara Simons held one of her first public outcries of unverifiable voting technology in 2003 because election officials in Silicon Valley wanted to switch to paperless machines.

Now, Barbara Simons serves as a board chair at Verified Voting.

Barbara Simons co-chaired the ACM study of statewide databases of registered voters alongside Paula Hawthorn.

Barbara Simons participated on the Security Peer Review Group for the US Department of Defense's Internet voting project and co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of SERVE because of security concerns 2004.

Barbara Simons played a key role in changing the League of Women Voters support and use of paperless voting.