Dr. Francine Berman is Vice President for Research and Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and a Fellow of the IEEE. In 2009, Dr. 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."

Prior to joining Rensselaer, Dr. Berman was Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and first holder of the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair in the Jacobs School of Engineering. From 2001 to 2009, Dr. Berman served as Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) where she led a staff of 250+ interdisciplinary scientists, engineers, and technologists. Dr. Berman is one of the two founding Principal Investigators of the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid project, and also directed the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI), a consortium of 41 research groups, institutions, and university partners with the goal of building national infrastructure to support research and education in science and engineering.

Dr. Berman has served on a broad spectrum of national and international leadership groups and committees including the National Science Foundation's Engineering Advisory Committee, the National Institutes of Health's NIGMS Advisory Committee, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology Board of Trustees, the National Academy of Sciences Board on Research Data and Information, the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Review Working Group, and others. From 2007-2010, she served as co-Chair of the US-UK Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. Dr. Berman is currently Chair-Elect of the Information, Computing and Communication Section (Section T) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), vice-Chair of the Anita Borg Institute Board of Trustees, and co-Chair of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI). For her accomplishments, leadership, and vision, Dr. Berman was recognized by the Library of Congress as a "Digital Preservation Pioneer", as one of the top women in technology by BusinessWeek and Newsweek, and as one of the top technologists by IEEE Spectrum.