ACM MemberNet - December 17, 2009
Welcome to the December 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 current and past issues of MemberNet online at http://membernet.acm.org/. Is there a person, event, or issue you'd like to see covered? Please email mn-editor at acm.org.
Read more ACM newsletters:
TechNews, ACM's digest of news and information for IT professionals published three times a week.
Washington Update, a monthly newsletter from USACM reporting on activities in Washington.
ACM CareerNews, published twice a month, provides summaries of articles on career-related topics in the computing field.
ACM-W newsletter (pdf) from ACM Women's Council.
TOP STORIES
- First-Ever Computer Science Education Week Targets Issues in Teaching Computer Science
- ACM Announces Slate of Candidates for Its 2010 General Election
- ACM Names 47 Fellows for Innovations in Computing, Information Technology
- ACM India to Launch in January before Compute 2010 in Bangalore
- ACM Annual Report Highlights International Outreach, Education Initiatives
Awards
- Call for ACM-W Athena Lecturer Nominations
- Call for 2009 ACM Award Nominations
Member Recognition - Call for ACM Senior Member Nominations
SIG Awards - ACM SIG Awards Recognize Achievements in Diverse Fields
Conferences and Events - acmqueue Launches Online ICPC Challenge for All Readers
- SIGCSE 2010 Aims to Unite CS Educator Community
- ACM-BCS Visions of Computer Science 2010
- Early Registration Now Available for SIGUCCS 2010 Management Symposium
- DAC 2010 Planning Technical Program
- Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2010 Call for Proposals
Member Programs - ACM Member-Get-A-Member 2009–2010 Campaign Launched
- Take Advantage of ACM's Lifetime Membership Plan
- ACM Adds Four Offerings to Insurance Program
Online Books & Courses - Registration for Spring Semester Courses at Stevens Online Now Open
Career & Job Center - Post Your Resumé in ACM's Career & Job Center
Education - Call for CSAB/ABET Degree Program Evaluators
Student News - Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions
- 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
- Deadline for ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards Nominations Extended to April 9, 2010
ACM-W News
- ACM-W to Host Special "Women in Computing" Event at ACM India Launch
- Report from OzWIT 2009: Australian Celebration of Women in ICT
- Join ACM-W's Membership Email List
Publications News - Communications of the ACM Reports: In Memory of Computing Pioneer Amir Pnueli
- acmqueue Asks: Are Streaming Query Engines the Best Technology for Processing "Data in Flight"?
ACM in the News - "Computing with a Wave of the Hand"
- "Computing Our Children's Future"
- "A Week to Focus on Computer Science Education"
- "Scientists, IT Community Await Exascale Computers"
- "Proper Use of English Could Get a Virus Past Security"
- "Gore Says Supercomputing Can Be Killer App in Climate Change"
TOP STORIES
First-Ever Computer Science Education Week Targets Issues in Teaching Computer Science
ACM and its partners launched Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) earlier this month to recognize the critical role of computing in society and the need to expose more students to the opportunities Computer Science presents. The CSEdWeek web site includes Computer Science curriculum guides, data, research, posters, and brochures. The site highlights best practices that demonstrate the rigorous level of Computer Science education necessary to train future innovators as well as ways to engage and excite students about these courses. The site also provides a platform to share and celebrate ideas at the national and local levels through interactive links to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Next year's CSEdWeek is slated for December 5 to 11, 2010.
Listen to a December 9 podcast interview with John White on the New York Times' Tech Talk page.
Read the press release.
ACM Announces Slate of Candidates for Its 2010 General Election
ACM has assembled its slate of candidates for President, Vice President, and Secretary/Treasurer (for the 2010 to 2012 term), and Members at Large (2010 to 2014). Statements and biographical sketches of all candidates will appear in the May 2010 issue of Communications of the ACM. ACM Professional Members will then have the option to vote either via the Internet or by paper ballot. Candidates for elected offices may also be nominated by petition. Petitions are due January 31, 2010. Visit the ACM Elections page for more information and to view the slate.
ACM Names 47 Fellows for Innovations in Computing, Information Technology
ACM has recognized 47 of its members for their contributions to computing and computer science that have contributed fundamental knowledge to the field and generated a broad range of innovations in industry, commerce, entertainment, and education. The 2009 ACM Fellows, from the world's leading universities, industries, and research labs, created advances in computer theory as well as practice. These accomplishments will play a crucial role in driving innovations that are necessary to sustain competitiveness in an information-based society.
Read the press release.
ACM India to Launch in January before Compute 2010 in Bangalore
The first major event for the ACM community in India is set for January 21, 2010 in Bangalore, the day before COMPUTE 2010, the annual event of the ACM Bangalore Chapter, opens. The ACM India Launch Event will be a day-long event featuring speakers that include current and past ACM Turing Award winners, ACM officers, and Indian ACM chapter leaders. Invitations are being sent to ACM members in India. Visit http://india.acm.org/ for updates on this event and for more information on ACM India.
A special ACM-W event has been added. Please read the announcement under "ACM-W News" for more information.
ACM Annual Report Highlights International Outreach, Education Initiatives
Global outreach initiatives focusing on Europe and India; promoting the image of computing (especially to students); garnering government support for expanding the role of CS in educational curricula; and the ACM Awards are highlighted in ACM's Annual Report for the 2009 fiscal year. The Annual Report will appear in the January 2010 issue of Communications of the ACM, and you can also read it and other board and committee reports here.
Awards
Call for ACM-W Athena Lecturer Nominations
The ACM-W Athena Lecturer Award celebrates outstanding women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to Computer Science. Candidates are nominated by Special Interest Group (SIG) officers; the Athena Lecturer gives a keynote at a SIG meeting of her and the SIG's choice, and receives a $10,000 honorarium, funded by Google. More information can be found on the Athena announcement page, which includes links to the nomination form and talks by previous winners. Nominations for next year are due February 1, 2010.
Call for 2009 ACM Award Nominations
Each year, ACM recognizes technical and professional achievements within the computing and information technology community through its celebrated Awards Program. And annually, ACM's award committees evaluate the contributions of candidates for various awards that span a spectrum of professional and technological accomplishments. You and your colleagues are invited to nominate candidates for ACM awards, including:- ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award: March 30, 2010
- ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award: July 1, 2010
- SIAM/ACM Award in Computational Science and Engineering: September 30, 2010
Refer to http://www.acm.org/nominations for nomination guidelines and the complete listing of 2009 Award Subcommittee Chairs and Members.
Member Recognition
Call for ACM Senior Member Nominations
The Senior Member advanced grade of membership 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 deadline for nominations is March 1, 2010.
SIG Awards
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:
Conferences and Events
acmqueue Launches Online ICPC Challenge for All Readers
Beginning January 11, 2010, acmqueue is offering an online programming competition based on the 2009 ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC) Challenge. The competition is open to all acmqueue readers (not just university students). The Queue ICPC Challenge applies the rules used in the ACM ICPC Challenge. The 2010 Queue ICPC Challenge problem is a simple game called Capture. Participants code "players" in C++, C# or Java, and then submit them to compete in a tournament with other players. For more information on how to participate, go to the Queue ICPC Challenge page.
SIGCSE 2010 Aims to Unite CS Educator Community
SIGCSE 2010, the 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, continues the long tradition of bringing together colleagues from around the world to make contact via paper, panel, poster and special sessions, as well as workshops, birds-of-a-feather, and informal settings. The conference, taking place March 10 to 13, 2010, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will give educators and all those interested in educational topics an opportunity to address the challenges of developing, implementing and/or evaluating computing programs, curricula, and courses. The symposium provides a forum for sharing new ideas for syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy, at all levels of instruction. Lightning Birds of a Feather submissions are due January 15, 2010. The early registration deadline is January 31, 2010. SIGCSE will also host the ACM Student Research Competition.
ACM-BCS Visions of Computer Science 2010
The joint ACM-BCS 2010 Visions of Computer Science conference will take place April 13 to 16, 2010 at the Informatics Forum, Edinburgh University, Scotland. This flagship event, a joint effort of ACM and the British Computer Society, aims to energize the computing community and bring it together around some positive and inspiring visions of our discipline and follows the highly successful Visions of Computer Science conference in 2008. Scheduled keynote speakers include 2008 ACM Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov, and Jon Kleinberg, winner of the 2008 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences. Topics include but are not limited to Computer Architectures and Digital Systems; Theoretical Computer Science: Algorithms and Complexity; Logic and Semantics; Non-standard Models of Computation; Programming Methods and Languages; Software Engineering and System Design Tools; Quantitative Evaluation of Algorithms, Systems, and Networks; Artificial Intelligence, Agents, and Machine Learning; Computer Networks; Distributed and Pervasive Systems; Grid Computing and eScience; Digital Economy; Databases, Information Retrieval and Data Mining, and Web-based Computation; Human Computer Interaction; Robotics and Computer Vision; Bioinformatics, Synthetic Biology and Synthetic Chemistry; and Medical Applications.
Early Registration Now Available for SIGUCCS 2010 Management Symposium
SIGUCCS, the ACM Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services, has scheduled its Spring Management Symposium for April 19 to 21, 2010 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Sessions will focus on topics relevant to IT decision-makers: CIOs, directors, managers, project and team leaders, and staff on leadership tracks. The Symposium consists of three tracks: Strategic Planning, Collaborations and Enriching Services; Innovation: Options, Implementations, and Technical Solutions; and Leadership, Management, and Professional Development Strategies. Early registration is now available.
DAC 2010 Planning Technical Program
ACM's 47th Design Automation Conference (DAC 2010), which takes place June 13 to 18, 2010, in Anaheim, California, is planning a strong technical program that will reflect all aspects of Design Automation. Research papers will focus on multicore/many core architectures, system prototyping technology, and embedded software design and debug, while Wild and Crazy Ideas (WACI) papers will give industry professionals and researchers an opportunity to cover more unconventional technical ideas. Submissions for User Track Presentations, due on January 18, 2010, should address the real-life issues that IC designers, application engineers, and design flow developers face. Ideas for the specific design, design methodologies, and design automation topics of workshops should be submitted by January 29. See the submission guidelines page for more information and deadlines.
Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2010 Call for Proposals
Organizers of the 20th annual ACM Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference (CFP 2010), which takes place June 15 to 18, 2010, in San Jose, have announced a call for proposals to help shape the program for next year's gathering. With the theme "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in the Networked Society," the conference seeks to address how constant connection in social, communication, information, and physical environments impacts freedom and privacy, and how computers can be used to improve freedom and privacy. Organizers are seeking suggestions for speakers, topics, workshops, tutorials, and panel sessions. The proposals should take advantage of the location of the conference, include a diverse set of panelists and new voices, offer a number of perspectives on challenging issues, and explore cutting-edge technology, legal, and policy issues. Possible topics include social networks, cloud computing, surveillance networks, anonymity in a networked world, ethics and computing, accessibility, open source, and media concentration, advertising, and political campaigning on the Internet. The final program will be assembled partly from the proposals. The final deadline for proposals is January 31, 2010.
Member Programs
ACM Member-Get-A-Member 2009–2010 Campaign Launched
ACM recently launched its new 2009–2010 Member-Get-A-Member Recruitment Drive, with new prizes added to our already great selection, and an Amazon Kindle® 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, 2010. For referral forms, recruitment tips and tools, prizes and rewards, and bonus gifts, visit the Member-Get-a-Member drive page.
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). Lifetime Members will receive a certificate of recognition suitable for framing, and enjoy all of the benefits of ACM Professional Membership. Show your exceptional support for ACM and its efforts to advance computing as a science and profession, and join over 900 of your peers by becoming a Lifetime Member!
ACM Adds Four Offerings to Insurance Program
ACM has added four 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.
Online Books & Courses
Registration for Spring Semester Courses at Stevens Online Now Open
ACM members are eligible for a 10% discount on courses at the Stevens-WebCampus program of Stevens Institute of Technology. Registration is now open through February 2, 2010 for the Stevens-WebCampus Spring 2010 session. Online Open House times are Wednesday, January 6 at 12 p.m., Thursday, January 7 at 7 p.m., Wednesday, January 20 at 12 p.m., and Thursday, January 21 at 7 p.m. With more than 170 instructor-led courses, the WebCampus program offers a convenient and flexible way to earn an MBA in Technology Management or any of 17 Masters' degrees or 55 Graduate certificates completely online. Students do not have to be accepted into a program in order to take graduate classes. It is possible to take up to three classes as a non-matriculating student while your application is under review. Detailed course and program descriptions, as well as admission information can be obtained at the WebCampus home page.
Career & Job Center
Post Your Resumé in ACM's Career & Job Center
Be sure to visit ACM's Career & Job Center to update your resumé, or create a new one in the Resumé Bank. ACM members' resumés now include an ACM logo on their entry, highlighting their ACM membership to employers. Also be sure to set up a Personal Job Alert to be notified about new jobs that are posted daily on the site. The Career & Job Center also includes access and links to hundreds of articles and websites in the Resources section. Take advantage of this free resource; browse through the library of articles, tips and information. For more information about the Career & Job Center please contact Jennifer Ruzicka.
Education
Call for CSAB/ABET Degree Program Evaluators
Are you interested in shaping our future computing workforce while enhancing your own professional skills? If so, consider becoming a CSAB/ABET program evaluator and contributing to the continuous improvement of computing education. Co-founded by ACM, CSAB, Inc., is the lead ABET member society for accreditation of programs in computer science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering. CSAB recruits and selects program evaluators in these areas and assigns them to campus visits. Serving on an ABET evaluation team for a degree program is not only professionally and personally rewarding, it is also an important means of giving back to your profession and supporting its future advancement. If you would like more information about becoming a CSAB/ABET evaluator, please visit the CSAB website. You can also apply directly through ABET's website.
Applications will be accepted through December 31.
Student News
Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions
ACM Student Research Competitions (SRCs), sponsored by Microsoft Research, offer a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research at well-known ACM sponsored and co-sponsored conferences before a panel of judges and attendees. The most recent SRC winner is Jacqueline R. Addesa of Virginia Tech, who presented at SC09. The next conferences accepting submissions are SIGCHI 2010, taking place April 10 to 15, 2010, deadline January 4, 2010; and ICSE 2010, taking place May 2 to 8, 2010, deadline January 7. Learn about more competitions on the SRC submissions page.
ACM-W Student Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences
A program launched by the ACM Women's Council (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. For more information, visit the Reasons to Transition to Professional Membership page.
Chapters News
Deadline for ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards Nominations Extended to April 9, 2010
The deadline for the 2009 ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards applications has been extended to April 9, 2010. The ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards Program recognizes chapters that display considerable initiative during the academic year. All student chapters in good standing are encouraged to apply for an award in any or all of the following categories:- Chapter Activities
- Web site
- Community Service
- Recruitment
- School Service
ACM-W News
ACM-W to Host Special "Women in Computing" Event at ACM India Launch
Coinciding with the ACM India Launch Event (see story in this issue under "Top Stories"), ACM-W is organizing a "Women in Computing" event for the evening of January 21, 2010. This event is an effort to encourage women in computing in India to network and organize to form a community which works towards improving working and learning environments for women in computing in India. The event will be held just after the ACM India Launch Event from 5:45 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Hotel Taj Residency, Bangalore. We invite all women students and professionals in computing to be a part of the first-ever ACM-W event in India. Please spread the news among your women colleagues and encourage them to come as well.
Register and learn more about the event here.
Report from OzWIT 2009: Australian Celebration of Women in ICT
OzWIT 2009, the regional Australian celebration patterned after the successful Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), brought together women from academia and industry for an energizing day on December 1. Google and IBM were represented, as were Australian organizations such as ACS and Victorian ICT for Women Network. Tony Lupton, Cabinet Secretary and Member for Prahran, emphasized that Victoria's information and communication technology sector employs approximately one-third of Australia's ICT workforce, and 73% of these companies reported profits last year. His message echoed that of the US, specifically that computing is an avenue for future growth rather than economic crashes. Jo Miller, an Australian who has lived in Silicon Valley for 10 years and was voted one of their most influential women in 2008, encouraged the audience to develop their own sphere of influence. The day included a celebration of programs such as Digital Divas, Go Girls, Tech Girls are Chic; an explanation of how major corporations are working for diversity (Google and IBM); and panels sharing strategies about the way forward (ACS-W, AWISE). "The energy generated this year was unprecedented," said conference co-chair Catherine Lang of Swinburne University, "but we must encourage each other to continue our good work." Lang cited statistics showing that the number of female students enrolling in higher education bachelor degree courses in computing has almost halved this century from 11,566 in 2001 to 6101 in 2007, a decline of 39.4%. However, increasing numbers of Australian female students have indicated an IT course as their first choice in a recent survey, an encouraging sign. For more information, please visit the OzWIT site or contact one of the co-chairs: Catherine Lang, Julie Fisher, or Annemieke Craig.
Join ACM-W's Membership Email List
A note from Bettina Bair, ACMW:CIS Newsletter Editor:
Did you know that ACM-W also offers a general email distribution list for its members? This ACMW-public list is an extremely low volume communication channel for disseminating general information about ACM-W, bulletins and upcoming events. Recently, in an effort to provide better communication with its members, ACM-W combined the CIS Newsletter list with the ACMW-public list. Your subscription will be automatically copied from the newsletter list to the more general one. The next newsletter will contain an interview with Ruzena Bajcsy, reports from our ACM-W ambassadors, scholarship project updates, new regional celebrations and much more!
To join the list: http://signup.acm.org/listserv_index.cfm?ln=ACM-W-PUBLIC
Publications News
Communications of the ACM Reports: In Memory of Computing Pioneer Amir Pnueli
The January Communications of the ACM (CACM) (available the week of December 21) is dedicated to the memory of Amir Pnueli, a Turing Award winner. Technology writer Leah Hoffmann remembers Pnueli, who died suddenly in November, as a man ahead of his time. His 1977 landmark paper, "The Temporal Logic of Programs," laid the foundation for the development of model checking, an automated formal-verification technique, and gave researchers a set of tools that enabled them to specify and reason about the ongoing behavior of programs. Pnueli also coined the term "reactive system" to describe systems that maintain an ongoing interaction with their environment. Communications, the flagship publication of ACM, offers readers access to this generation's most significant leaders and innovators in computing and information technology, and is available online in digital format.
Read the press release.
acmqueue Asks: Are Streaming Query Engines the Best Technology for Processing "Data in Flight"?
Today's Web applications, location-aware services, and environmental-monitoring services are producing data at colossal rates. To help companies cope with this data deluge, engineers have developed a lightweight data-processing technology called the streaming query engine. In an article for acmqueue, Julian Hyde from SQLstream introduces the technology, focusing on both how streaming query engines are used and why they're better than relational databases for processing rapidly flowing data streams.
ACM in the News
"Computing with a Wave of the Hand"
MIT News, December 11, 2009
MIT team presenting first application of display that lets users manipulate on-screen images using hand gestures at SIGGRAPH Asia.
"Computing Our Children's Future"
The Huffington Post, December 11, 2009
Computer Science Education Week, led by ACM and other partners, demonstrates that the hopes and dreams of our future leaders will not be realized by simply knowing how to turn on a computer, but by turning kids on to Computer Science. The computing community, including industry leaders, is spotlighting the connection between Computer Science education and success in a digital world.
"A Week to Focus on Computer Science Education"
RedOrbit, December 9, 2009
To understand why organizations such as ACM and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are supporting CSED week, it helps to understand just how neglected the subject is in American schools. Computer Science Education Week should be a wake up call to revamp Computer Science education at the K-12 level.
"Scientists, IT Community Await Exascale Computers"
Computerworld, December 7, 2009
The information technology industry discussed the challenges it faces in developing exascale systems, a new generation of supercomputers that promise to be far more powerful than existing technology, during the recent SC09 supercomputing conference in Portland, Oregon.
"Proper Use of English Could Get a Virus Past Security"
New Scientist, November 27, 2009
Johns Hopkins University security researcher Josh Mason says hackers could potentially evade most existing antivirus programs by hiding malicious code within ordinary text. Mason and colleagues presented their research at the recent ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, but were careful to omit some of their methodology to avoid helping potential hackers.
"Gore Says Supercomputing Can Be Killer App in Climate Change"
Computerworld, November 19, 2009
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore told attendees at the recent SC09 supercomputing conference that their work on supercomputers is essential to avoiding a global catastrophic event caused by climate change.
Copyright © 2009, ACM, Inc.