Francine Berman

Director of Public Interest Technology and PIT@UMass co-Founder

University of Massachusetts – Amherst

PIT-NE Working Groups:
PIT Summer Program

Dr. Berman joined the College of Information and Computer Sciences at UMass Amherst as Director of Public Interest Technology and Stuart Rice Research Professor in 2021.

Previously, she was the Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). She is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and was selected as the 2019-2020 Katherine Hampson Bessell Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Berman was the inaugural recipient of the ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award for “influential leadership in the design, development, and deployment of national-scale cyberinfrastructure.” In 2015, Berman was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become a member of the National Council on the Humanities. In 2019, she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2020, Berman was elected to be a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.  She also received the Paul Evan Peters Award which recognizes “notable, lasting achievements in the creation and innovative use of network-based information resources and services that advance scholarship and intellectual productivity”.  The award is jointly given by the Coalition of Networked Information, the Association of Research Libraries, and Educause.