What's Up Lately at ACM India

Hello ACM India Members:

In this edition of "What's up Lately at ACM India", let's take a look at some imminent developments worth making a note of.

First and foremost, here is another reminder of the nomination deadline for ACM India Doctoral Dissertation Award, which is today 31 August 2024 11pm IST. PhD thesis advisers, please rush nominations for this coveted award. Also, nominations for the other three prestigious ACM India awards (Early Career Researcher, Outstanding Contribution to Computing Education, and Outstanding Contributions in Computing by a Woman) are due by 15 September 2024. You can find more details for all the awards via: india.acm.org/awards. The nomination forms for these awards are directly available via: cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ACMIndiaAwards2024.

On a related note, hope you have seen ACM CEO Vicki Hanson's recent mailer about ACM awards. Borrowing a line from her message: "deserving individuals cannot receive these awards unless someone such as you takes the time to submit their nomination for an Award!" There are so many excellent candidates in our community, but unless we nominate them, their contribution will not get the recognition it deserves, at India or world level. The list of ACM awards and all details of the nomination process are available via https://awards.acm.org/award-nominations. Have you also noticed that ACM has just announced Luiz André Barroso Award to recognize researchers from historically underrepresented communities, which is a great initiative for obvious reasons.

ACM India continues its momentum of initiating events of highest stature, which bring together top contributors from India and across the world for focused, in-depth interactions. On the heels of organizing the inaugural edition of Pingala Interactions in Computing (PIC) in February 2024, we are launching the ACM India IndiCS series. You may remember the " IndiCS call for proposals" from early this year. The IndiCS committee has selected a proposal by Sujoy Bhore, Rohit Gurjar and Akash Kumar for a 5-day seminar titled "Continuous Methods in Discrete Optimization and Complexity" for the invitation-only inaugural edition of this series. Like PIC, the IndiCS event will be hosted by Infosys at their world-class Mysore campus, in October 2024. Missed submitting an IndiCS proposal last time? Nothing to worry -- stay tuned for the next call to be announced shortly!

On a personal note, today marks the completion of six years of my role as the Executive Director of ACM India, which has been a glorious and highly satisfying stint for me. However it's now time to move on from this role. I had the honor of working with multiple ACM India and ACM leaders, and most importantly so many ACM members and volunteers like you. Together we have worked to make ACM India a thriving hub of initiatives helping the computing community. Thank you very much for all your contributions and support to ACM India and to me personally. I will remain engaged with ACM a volunteer and member, and I look forward to our paths crossing again in the future!

Wish you all the best in every aspect of your life.

Regards,

Hemant

====

Hemant Pande, PhD
Executive Director, ACM India
[email protected]