Leadership
About Dean Laura Haas
Laura Haas joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2017 as the first permanent dean of the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) following the School of Computer Science's elevation to a college in 2015. During her tenure, Dean Haas has overseen a 60% increase in undergraduate and graduate enrollment, partnered with university leadership to secure a $75 million investment from former Governor Charlie Baker’s administration for a new 90,000 sq. ft. building for the college, and set a revolutionary vision for the college’s research, education, and outreach—Computing for the Common Good™—aligning faculty, students and staff around a desire to improve the well-being of the people of the Commonwealth and the world. In support of this vision, she has brought in millions of dollars of funding for scholarships to increase the enrollment of women and students underrepresented in computing, and has overseen the development of programming and curriculum to promote inclusivity and a sense of belonging.
Prior to joining CICS, Dr. Haas spent 36 years at IBM Research, where she rose to the level of IBM Fellow and served as Director of the Accelerated Discovery Lab. She graduated from Harvard with a bachelors of arts in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, and she earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. Dean Haas is a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award and the ACM SIGMOD Codd Innovation Award among other distinctions, including multiple awards for leadership from organizations that support women in computing. She is an ACM Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.