CS Chair Michael Franklin Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Michael Franklin, the Liew Family Chair of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, has been elected to the 2023 class of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; one of the nation’s most prestigious societies. The honor is reserved for world leaders in the arts and sciences, as well as business, philanthropy, and public affairs. Franklin is one of five University of Chicago faculty members to be elected this year.

The Academy aims to “examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Franklin joins notable members dating back to 1780, including founder John Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Martin Luther King Jr. Over two hundred and fifty of its members hold Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes.

Joining the University of Chicago in 2016, Franklin serves as Senior Advisor to the Provost on Computation and Data Science and is Faculty Co-Director of the Data Science Institute. He is a noted authority on databases, data analytics, data management and distributed systems. In addition, he is one of the original creators of Apache Spark, a leading open source platform for data analytics and machine learning. He is also a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Franklin is the first faculty member from the University of Chicago to be named to the Academy in the Computer Sciences category. He joins Computer Science professors Laszlo Babai and Alexander Razborov, who were named in the area of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics in 2015 and 2020 respectively.

To see the list of all elected members, you can view the Academy’s directory here.