Robert B. Schnabel


Robert Schnabel is an American computer scientist, and is executive director and CEO of the Association for Computing Machinery, a position he has held since November 1, 2015.
He is known for promoting diversity and broadening participation in computing, engineering and mathematics.

Life and career

Schnabel was born in Queens, New York. He earned his A.B. degree in Mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1971.
From 1973 to 1977, Schnabel studied Computer Science at the Cornell University, receiving his M.S. degree in 1975 and
Ph.D. degree in 1977.
Schnabel joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science in 1977. He remained at CU-Boulder for 30 years, becoming Associate in 1980 and then Full Professor in 1988, Chair of the Department of Computer Science in 1990, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the College of Engineering in 1995 and Vice Provost for Academic and Campus Computing and Chief Information Officer in 1998. Schnabel was founding director of the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society Institute.
Schnabel was Dean and Professor of the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, a position he held from 2007 - 2015.
Schnabel is a co-founder and executive team member of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, a U.S. national non-profit organization aimed at increasing the participation of women and girls in information technology education and careers. He served as founding chair of the Association for Computing Machinery Education Policy Committee, and he serves on the board of code.org.
Schnabel currently serves on the advisory committee for the National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. He has served as chair of the advisory committee for the Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions, and was a co-founder of the Alliance for the Advancement of African-American Researchers in Computing.
Schnabel's research interests include numerical computation, numerical solution of unconstrained and constrained optimization problems, solution of systems of nonlinear equations, and nonlinear least squares. He has served as editor-in-chief of SIAM Review and as associate editor of several journals, including SIAM Journal on Optimization, Mathematical Programming A, Mathematical Programming B and Operations Research Letters.

Honors and awards