ACM MemberNet - Oct. 25, 2007
Welcome to the October edition of ACM MemberNet, bringing you the world of ACM and beyond. Explore the many facets of ACM with our newsletter of member activities and events. Read MemberNet online at http://membernet.acm.org/
Read TechNews, ACM's digest of news and information for IT professionals published three times a week.
Published biweekly, ACM CareerNews provides summaries of articles on career-related topics in the computing field.
A Letter from John White, ACM CEO
Awards
- Call for ACM Award Nominations
- Call for ACM Fellows and Advanced Member Level Nominations
- ACM SIG Awards Recognize Achievements in Diverse Fields
Member Benefits
- Access Valuable Career Resources in the New ACM Career & Job Center
- Polish Your Technical, Professional Skills with ACM's Online Books & Courses
- New 2007/2008 Member-Get-A-Member Drive Launched
- ACM Adds Four New Offerings to Insurance Program
- Take Advantage of ACM's Lifetime Membership Plan
Conferences and Events
- SIGADA Conference on the Ada Programming Language
- SC07 Supercomputing Conference to Observe 50th birthday of Fortran
Public Policy
- IT Job Prospects and Salaries on the Rise
Education
- ACM Partners with MentorNet to Offer Mentoring Services
Student News
- ACM Partners with MentorNet to Offer Mentoring Services
- Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions Call for Submissions
- ACM-W Student Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences
- Student Volunteers Needed to Help Train High School CS Teachers
- Graduating Students Eligible for Special Transition Rate
Chapters News
- Welcome New ACM Chapters
Publications News
- ACM Journals Continue to Rank High in Publications Survey
- Editors' "Top Pick" Papers from Three New Transactions
- ACM Queue Talks with Pioneers of the ZFS File System
- ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage Call for Papers
- ACM Seeks Missing SIG Newsletters for Digital Library
ACM in the News
- "Fran Allen Fellowship Award Founded"
- "Seventh Grace Hopper Conference Opens With Record-Setting Participation"
- "Internet Preparing to Go into Outer Space"
- "SC07 Conference Focuses on Higher Education"
A Letter from John White, ACM CEO
Earlier this month, a letter from John White, Chief Executive Officer of ACM, was mailed to ACM professional members. In it, White outlined current and future initiatives, including the Career & Job Center; an expanded Online Books & Courses program; a mentoring program in partnership with MentorNet; and a new Education Policy Committee. You can read the full letter here.
Awards
Call for ACM Award Nominations
ACM brings broad recognition to outstanding technical and professional achievements within the computing and information technology community. Each year our award committees evaluate the contributions of candidates spanning a spectrum of professional and technological accomplishments. Nominations by ACM members of those who deserve recognition for their contributions to the field of computing are welcomed. This is a great opportunity to recognize some of the many unsung heroes.
The deadline for all ACM awards, including the A.M. Turing Award, is October 31, 2007, with the following exceptions:
The deadline for nominations for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award and the SIAM/ACM Award in Computational Science and Engineering is September 30, 2008. The deadline for the new ACM - Infosys Foundation Award is December 31, 2007.
Please refer to the ACM Awards page for:- award descriptions,
- lists containing the names of the previous ACM Award winners and their citations,
- nomination procedures for the 2007 awards, and
- contact information for the Chairs, and list of members, of the 2007 Award Committees.
ACM recognizes annually a class of ACM Fellows, our distinguished colleagues that ACM and its members look to for guidance and leadership. ACM also has advanced grade memberships of Distinguished Engineer/Scientist/Member and Senior Member.
Senior Member recognizes ACM members with at least 10 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous ACM Professional membership who have demonstrated performance and accomplishment that set them apart from their peers. Nominations are accepted on a quarterly basis. The next deadline for nominations is November 30, 2007.
The Distinguished Engineer/Scientist/Member designation recognizes ACM members with at least 15 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous ACM Professional membership who have demonstrated significant accomplishments or made a significant impact on the computing field. The deadline for nominations is July 31, 2008.
Fellows are outstanding ACM members with at least 5 years of continuous ACM Professional membership who are recognized for their technical, professional and leadership contributions that advance the objectives of ACM and the field as a whole. The deadline for nominations is September 9, 2008.
ACM SIG Awards Recognize Achievements in Diverse Fields
ACM's Special Interest Groups (SIGs) regularly cite outstanding individuals for their contributions in more than 30 distinct technological fields. Some awards presented (or to be presented) at recent conferences:
- SIGCOMM CoNext Rising Star Award
- SIGPLAN Most Influential ICFP Paper Award
- SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award
- ACM SIGBED/SIGSOFT Frank Anger Memorial Award
Member Benefits
Access Valuable Career Resources in the New ACM Career & Job Center
ACM recently relaunched the Career & Job Center, greatly expanding its scope of job opportunities in the computing industry. In partnership with Job Target, ACM offers many career-building features to both job seekers and employers. For example, ACM members can:
- access hundreds of corporate job postings not often seen on commercial sites, from companies like Qualcomm, FX Studios, Idexx Labs, Windlogics, Apple, Bloomberg LP, and T-Mobile
- post resumes, allowing you to stay connected to the employment market
- set up an advanced Job Alert system to notify you of opportunities matching your criteria
- get live career advice to assist you in resume development, creating cover letters, researching companies, negotiating an offer, and more
Prospective employers can post jobs and reach a targeted, highly qualified audience of over 83,000 computing professionals and students. To post a job opening: create an employer account, log in, and choose the recruitment option that's right for your needs. You can also browse the resumes of candidates interested in your positions.
Since the relaunch, more than 400 jobs and 300 resumes have been posted, and more than 2,000 corporations have set up accounts. Why not visit the Career & Job Center today, and discover the many opportunities this market has to offer!
Polish Your Technical, Professional Skills with ACM's Online Books & Courses
More than 9,000 ACM members have taken advantage of the 2,200 Skillsoft online technology and business courses offered by ACM. If you're wondering about the quality of the courses, the favorable review rate by members is around 80%. The most popular ACM online courses remain those in the current technology area, such as:- Linux and CLI (Common Language Infrastructure)
- Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with UML
- J2EE Architecture and J2SE 5
- Perl
- SQL Server 2005
- .Net, and other Microsoft and Oracle related courses
ACM recently updated its e-book offerings of 1,100 free online books from Safari and Books24x7. ACM Professional Members now have access to 600 selections from Safari® Books Online, including the new edition of the Grady Booch classic, Object Oriented Analysis and Design. Safari also includes a large collection of excellent O'Reilly tutorial/reference books; the popular Head First and Nutshell series are included, with books such as Head First Design Patterns and Java and Perl in a Nutshell. The Books24x7 titles have also been upgraded to include many more books on current technology, with over 100 new titles.
Now ACM members have even more choices for upgrading their professional and technical skills. For more information and listings, visit the Online Books & Courses Home Page.
New 2007/2008 Member-Get-A-Member Drive Launched
ACM's new 2007/2008 Member-Get-A-Member Recruitment Drive is now in full swing, with new prizes, and an Apple iPhone grand prize! Current members are the ideal ambassadors to communicate the advantages of joining ACM to prospective members, and those who participate by telling friends and colleagues about ACM may be eligible for valuable gifts and special recognition. ACM's Online Member-Get-A-Member program is interactive, easy to use, and rewards members for helping to recruit new members. The drive ends June 30, 2008. For referral forms, recruitment tips and tools, prizes and rewards, and bonus gifts, visit the Member-Get-a-Member drive page.
ACM Adds Four New Offerings to Insurance Program
ACM is pleased to announce the addition of four new plans to the ACM Insurance Program. The new offerings are Group 10 or 20 Year Level Term Life Insurance, Long Term Care, and Group Dental Insurance. ACM members living in the US are eligible. Visit the insurance page to learn more about these programs, and all of ACM's Insurance Program plans.
Take Advantage of ACM's Lifetime Membership Plan
ACM Professional Members can enjoy the convenience of making a single payment for their entire tenure as an ACM Member, and also be protected from future price increases by taking advantage of ACM's Lifetime Membership option. Pricing for ACM Lifetime Membership is based on age and current dues rates, and the option to include the ACM Digital Library is also available. ACM Lifetime Membership dues may be tax deductible under certain circumstances (please consult with your tax advisor), so becoming a Lifetime Member can have additional advantages if you act before the end of 2007. Lifetime Members will receive a certificate of recognition suitable for framing, and enjoy all of the benefits of ACM Professional Membership.
Conferences and Events
SIGADA Conference on the Ada Programming Language
ACM SIGAda 2007 features leading researchers, practitioners, and providers of high-integrity, secure and safe systems software. The conference emphasizes the strengths of the Ada programming language in distributed, real-time, and embedded systems. Tutorials will cover Ada Web Services, Security by Construction, and Languages for Safety-Critical Software. Scheduled keynote speakers are Joe Jarzombek, Department of Homeland Security; Jeff O'Leary, Federal Aviation Administration; and Rod Chapman, Praxis High Integrity. SIGAda 2007 takes place November 4 to 9 in Fairfax, Virginia, and is sponsored by ACM's Special Interest Group on Ada.
SC07 Supercomputing Conference to Observe 50th birthday of Fortran
SC07, the International Conference for High Performance Computing Networking, Storage and Analysis, will celebrate Fortran's 50th birthday with a special panel devoted to the programming language's influence on computer technologies. ACM Turing Award winner Fran Allen will moderate the discussion, and panelists will include David Padua from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Henry M. Tufo of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, John Levesque of Cray, and Richard Hanson of Visual Numerics. SC07 takes place November 10 to 16 in Reno, Nevada, where attendees can benefit from the conference's many panels, paper presentations, workshops, tutorials, exhibits, and hands-on learning.
Public Policy
IT Job Prospects and Salaries on the Rise
The continuing decline in interest and enrollment in Computer Science has troubled the computing community for the past few years. After the dot-com bubble burst, employment fell and Computer Science majors rationally followed suit. However, in the past couple of years, this trend has continued to puzzle the field's leaders, who hear widespread but anecdotal stories of graduates receiving multiple job offers and employers noting trouble finding talent for open positions. New data have recently been published that provide more than mere anecdotes for the strong job prospects in information technology (IT). ACM updated data compiled by the Computing Research Association (CRA) showing the Bureau of Labor Statistics' projected job openings in various science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields vs. the number of graduates from those fields (based on National Science Foundation data). Total employment in IT is actually 10 percent higher than at the height of the dot-com boom, even in the face of increased offshoring. However, there has been significant reorganization within the categories of IT employment.
Education
ACM Partners with MentorNet to Offer Mentoring Services
ACM recently partnered with MentorNet, the award-winning not-for-profit organization promoting e-mentoring relationships between professionals (mentors) and students (protégés) in engineering, science and math. MentorNet's One-on-One programs are an excellent opportunity for ACM Student Members to be matched with mentors from industry, government, higher education, and other sectors. Professionals who become mentors in MentorNet's One-on-One Mentoring Program can make a big difference in students' lives by providing real-world information, encouragement and advice. This month's MentorNet newsletter highlights a new blog; explores why there aren't more Latinos/Latinas graduating in technical fields; and profiles one successful MentorNet mentor. Learn more about becoming a student protégé or a volunteer mentor at http://www.acm.org/mentornet.
Student News
ACM Partners with MentorNet to Offer Mentoring Services (see story under "Education")
Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions Call for Submissions
ACM Student Research Competitions take place at ACM-sponsored conferences throughout the year. Students present their papers in poster sessions to compete for the Grand Finals prizes, and network with luminaries from academia and industry. CHI 08 is the next conference accepting submissions. The deadline is January 8, 2008. The deadline for submissions for PLDI 08 is February 8, 2008.
ACM-W Student Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences
A program launched by ACM's Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W) provides support for undergraduate or graduate women students in Computer Science programs who are interested in attending research conferences. It is not required that the student present a paper at the conference she attends. High school students will also be considered for conference support. Initially, up to 12 scholarships of up to $500 each will be awarded annually. ACM-W also encourages the student's home department to match the scholarship award and recognize the student's achievement locally within her department. Applications will be evaluated in four groups each year, in order to distribute awards across a range of conferences, with two to three awards given each quarter. For application form, notification dates and more information, please visit the scholarships page.
Student Volunteers Needed to Help Teach High School CS Teachers
The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is seeking Computer Science college students proficient in Java and other new programming languages and environments to train high school CS teachers in these technologies. Java Engagement for Teacher Training (JETT) and Teacher Enrichment in Computer Science (TECS) are one- and two-day workshops for high school teachers, hosted by college and university CS students and faculty. Hosting a JETT or TECS workshop is a great volunteer experience for individual student ACM members, as well as student chapters. For more information please contact Gail Chapman, the JETT and TECS workshop coordinator.
Graduating Students Eligible for Special Transition Rate
ACM offers a special ACM Professional Membership for $49 USD (regularly $99) to help graduating students make the transition to professional careers, and take advantage of continuous learning opportunities, including free online books and courses and access to ACM's Career & Job Center. This one-year-only transition rate includes all the benefits of Professional Membership plus the option of purchasing a Digital Library subscription for $50. Recent graduates can access this special transition offer through ACM's convenient online renewal form, or by following the instructions on the paper renewal form.
Chapters News
Welcome New ACM Chapters
Chapters are the "local neighborhoods" of ACM. The regional ACM Professional, Student, ACM-W, and Special Interest Group (SIG) chapters around the globe involve members locally in competitions, seminars, lectures, workshops, and networking opportunities. ACM welcomes these new chapters that have been chartered since January 2007:
ACM Professional Chapters:- Agile Bazaar, North Andover, Massachusetts
- Australasian SIGCSE, Sydney, Australia
- Bogota SIGGRAPH, Bogota, Colombia
- Manchester SIGGRAPH, Manchester, UK
- Moscow SIGPLAN, Moscow, Russia
- Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham-Amirtapuri Campus, Kerala, India
- Anuradha Engineering College, Maharashtra, India
- Bilkent University, Blikent, Turkey
- Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, California
- Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India
- Coleman College, San Diego, California
- D.J. Sanghvi College of Engineering, Mumbai, India
- Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus, Turkey
- FEU-East Asia College, Manila, Philippines
- Francis Marion University, Florence, South Carolina
- Golden Gate University, San Francisco, California
- Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania
- Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York
- ITT Technical Institute/Webster, Webster, Texas
- Metro State College/Denver, Denver, Colorado
- PAF-Karachi Institute of Eco. & Tech., Karachi, Pakistan
- Saint Xavier University, Chicago, Illinois
- SGGSIE&T , Nanded, India
- Shorter College, Rome, Georgia
- Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven
- The Pesse, PES School of Engineering, Bangalore, India
- Turner Ashby High School, Bridgewater, Virginia
- Tyler Junior College, Tyler, Texas
- Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas, Bogota, Colombia
- University of Alabama/Huntsville
- West Texas A&M University, Canyon, Texas
- University of Southern California, Los Angeles
- Clarkson University SIGGRAPH, Potsdam, New York
- Universidad Central de Venezuela SIGGRAPH, Caracas
- University of Wisconsin/Stout SIGGRAPH, Menomonie
- Webster University SIGGRAPH, St. Louis, Missouri
- Stony Brook University ACM-W, Stony Brook, New York
- University of Oklahoma ACM-W, Norman
- Norfolk State University ACM-W, Norfolk, Virginia
Publications News
ACM Journals Continue to Rank High in Publications Survey
In the 2006 survey of the world's most highly cited, peer-reviewed technology publications, ACM's journals in Software Engineering took first, second, and third place in this highly valued computing category, which ranked 82 journals. The 2006 Journal Citations Reports are published by Thomson Scientific and were released in June 2007. They present statistical data that provides a systematic, objective way to evaluate the world's leading journals and their influence in the global research community. In the Software Engineering field, the top three journals were ACM Transactions on Graphics (ToG), Journal of the ACM (JACM), and Transactions on Database Systems (TODS). For more highlights from this report, read the press release.
Editors' "Top Pick" Papers from Three New Transactions
The Editors-in-Chief of the three newest additions to ACM's renowned Transactions series have selected must-read papers from Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS), Transactions on the Web (TWEB), and Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD). Access to the full text of these articles will be available to everyone through November 30th. The papers are:
From TAAS:- Design Patterns from Biology for Distributed Computing
- A Survey of Autonomic Communications
- Cooperation Through Self-Assembly in Multi-Robot Systems
- BrowserShield: Vulnerability-Driven Filtering of Dynamic HTML
- Visualizing Tags over Time
- Analytic Modeling of Multitier Internet Applications
- Graph Evolution: Densification and Shrinking Diameters
- Clustering Aggregation
- Collective Entity Resolution in Relational Data
- L-Diversity: Privacy Beyond k-Anonymity
ACM Queue Talks with Pioneers of the ZFS File System
Data corruption has become an increasingly menacing problem for today's data centers. Hard disk drives have become a commodity resource with consistent failure rates, so the faster we access them, the faster the data errors pile up. With ZFS, Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore from Sun Microsystems have built a file system that can detect and correct these errors. This month Queue speaks with Bonwick and Moore, who explain ZFS's approach to data integrity, administration, and scalability.
ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage Call for Papers
ACM's new Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) is seeking papers on the use of information and communications technology in support of Cultural Heritage, such as on-site and remotely sensed data collection; metadata, classification schema, ontologies and semantic processing; and intelligent tools for digital reconstruction. Visit the JOCCH Web site for more information.
ACM Seeks Missing SIG Newsletters for Digital Library
ACM is seeking to complete its Digital Library archive of Special Interest Group (SIG) newsletters. (Thanks to all who have contributed so far--we're 98% there!) Please review the spreadsheet of missing SIG newsletter issues and, if you have any of the ones on the list, contact Craig Rodkin with your list and for shipping details. Be sure to let Craig know if you'd like the newsletters returned to you.
ACM in the News
"Fran Allen Fellowship Award Founded"
Dr. Dobb's Journal, October 22, 2007
IBM has created an award in honor of Fran Allen, the first woman to win ACM's A.M. Turing Award. The award will be given annually to a female Ph.D. student, and her school will also receive an award.
"Seventh Grace Hopper Conference Opens With Record-Setting Participation"
Business Wire, October 17, 2007
The 2007 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing drew 1400 participants from 22 countries, and broke records for attendance, scholarship awards, sponsorship, and underwriting.
"Internet Preparing to Go into Outer Space"
Yahoo! News, October 17, 2007
2004 ACM Turing Award winner Vinton Cerf says "interplanetary" Internet would allow people to remotely access information and to control experiments taking place far away from Earth.
"SC07 Conference Focuses on Higher Education"
HPC Wire October 15, 2007
SC07 high performance computing conference will stress diversity, with many events involving students and individuals from underrepresented groups.
Read more ACM in the News.
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