CANDIDATE FOR DIRECTOR

Darrell Long

My first USENIX publication was in 1989, at the very beginning of my research career. Ever since then USENIX has been a big part of my career, and that of my colleagues and students. By accepting the nomination to serve on the USENIX Board, I am taking the opportunity to try to give back to an organization that has given so much to me and to my students.

As an educator and a researcher, the issues that are most important to me are, naturally, education and research. USENIX conferences are some of the best in the world, and yet they still are not as well respected by Deans and tenure committees as those of ACM and IEEE. One of the issues, of course, is that these committees are often made up of people who would not attend USENIX conferences: theoreticians, and those who do AI, machine learning, computer graphics, and the like. I know firsthand that some of the papers that appear in the Annual Technical Conference Proceedings are better than any that appear in most ACM or IEEE conference proceedings, and many USENIX papers are equal to the very best of the ACM and IEEE conference proceedings. The selection criteria for the Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST) that I am chairing in January were as strict as those of the most prestigious ACM or IEEE conferences. If elected, I will make it one of my priorities to expand the visibility of USENIX beyond our normal community. This will further encourage bright young researchers to feel good about basing their tenure cases on publications at USENIX conferences. Good research papers are, after all, what make conferences great (although the USENIX people make them more fun).

I realize that our conference schedule is quite crowded, but I also believe that we need to continue to develop new conferences that fit emerging needs. The rapid pace of change in our field necessitates the creation of new venues as new technologies emerge. While file systems are hardly new, we created the FAST conference to fill a need. Every operating systems conference always gets more good file system papers than it take, which shows the high level of activity in the area. For FAST we received 110 submissions, about the same number as the Annual Technical Conference. We were surprised, and gratified at having two to three times the number of submissions we expected. Another area of emerging need is mobile computing, and I am sure there are others as well.

So, if elected, I will make research and education my priorities. I will be grateful if you will give me the opportunity to give back even a little of what USENIX has given me over the years.

Biography: Darrell Long is Professor of Computer Science, and the Director of the Storage Systems Research Center, in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the Vice-Chair of the University of California systemwide Committee on Research Policy. He consults for IBM Research, and has contributed to several products. He holds a B.S. in computer science from San Diego State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science & engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

He has been involved in USENIX for a number of years, most recently as the Chair of the highly successful Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST). He has also served for a number of years on the Scholastic Committee, and for the past two years as the Chair of that Committee. He has served on a number of USENIX program committees, including twice on the program committee for the Annual Technical Conference. He has also served as the Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Operating Systems, and continues to serve on the Executive Committee of that group.

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