University of Georgia College of Engineering dean Alessandro (Alex) Orso has been elected a Fellow of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery.

ACM Fellows are selected by their peers for achieving remarkable results through their technical innovations and/or service to the field. This year’s honorees were chosen from among ACM’s global membership of more than 100,000 computing professionals. “These men and women represent the top 1% of professionals in our association,” said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis.

An expert in software engineering, Orso’s research focuses on software testing, program analysis, and debugging. His work includes the development of techniques for improving software reliability, security, and trustworthiness, and the validation of those techniques on real-world systems.

His research has attracted funding from a variety of government agencies and industry partners, including Google, IBM, and Microsoft. In 2021, Orso was instrumental in securing $11 million in philanthropic funding from Schmidt Futures (now Schmidt Sciences) to establish the Scientific Software Engineering Center at Georgia Tech. He served as the inaugural director of the center, which is developing new methodologies to improve scientific software and train a new generation of software engineers.

ACM cited Orso’s selection as Fellow “for contributions in developing novel and impactful techniques for software testing and debugging.”

Orso is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Beyond his research, Orso has demonstrated a commitment to exceptional instruction and innovation in the classroom. He was appointed dean of the University of Georgia College of Engineering in 2025. Prior to joining UGA, Orso served as a professor, associate dean, and interim dean in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as inaugural director of Georgia Tech’s Scientific Software Engineering Center.