Alexandra Meliou Named ACM Distinguished Member for Foundational Contributions to Data Systems
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Alexandra Meliou, professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), has been named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), one of the organization’s highest recognitions for technical excellence and impact.
The ACM Distinguished Member grade honors computing professionals with at least 15 years of experience who have achieved significant accomplishments or leadership in the field. Meliou is recognized for her extensive contributions to the foundations and design of understandable, trustworthy, and usable data systems.
Meliou’s research has advanced multiple areas of data management. Her work on causality and explanations introduced influential models and algorithms that help users understand how data influences query results and system behavior. She has also played a leading role in fairness-aware software engineering, developing methods to detect discriminatory behaviors in software systems and techniques for selecting diverse, balanced datasets that mitigate algorithmic bias.
Her contributions to in-database prescriptive analytics—including new abstractions and scalable algorithms for evaluating complex, constraint-based queries—have expanded the range of decision-making tasks that database systems can support efficiently.
In addition to her research accomplishments, Meliou has held significant leadership roles in the data management community. She currently serves as vice-chair of ACM SIGMOD (2025–2029) and previously co-chaired the SIGMOD 2024 program committee, where she helped introduce improvements to reviewing processes and community practices adopted across major venues.
Meliou joined the CICS faculty in 2012. She has received numerous recognitions for research, teaching, and service, including the ACM SIGMOD Comprehensive Reproducibility Award, an ACM SIGSIFT Distinguished Paper Award, multiple SIGMOD Research Highlight Awards, and a Communications of the ACM Research Highlight. She holds a PhD and MS in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BS in electrical and computer engineering from the National Technical University of Athens.
