ACM MemberNet - April 26, 2012

Welcome to the April 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.

TOP STORIES

Awards Member Recognition Conferences and Events Public Policy Member Programs Learning Center Career & Job Center Education Student News Distinguished Speakers Program Chapters News ACM-W News Publications News ACM in the News
TOP STORIES

ACM-Infosys Foundation Award Goes to Architect of New Approaches for Computational Problems
ACM and the Infosys Foundation have named Sanjeev Arora of Princeton University the recipient of the 2011 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences for his innovative approaches to problem solving. Arora's research revolutionized the approach to essentially unsolvable problems that have long bedeviled the computing field, the so-called NP-complete problems. These results have had implications for problems common to cryptography, computational biology, and computer vision, among other fields. The ACM-Infosys Foundation Award recognizes personal contributions by young scientists and system developers to a contemporary innovation that exemplifies the greatest recent achievements in the computing field. Financial support for the $175,000 award is provided by an endowment from the Infosys Foundation.

"With his new tools and techniques, Arora has developed a fundamentally new way of thinking about how to solve problems," said ACM President Alain Chesnais. "He also demonstrated that when we can't solve these problems, we understand why this is the case. In particular, his work on the PCP theorem is considered the most important development in computational complexity theory in the last 30 years. He also perceived the practical applications of his work, which has moved computational theory into the realm of real world uses."

Arora will receive his award at the annual ACM Awards Banquet, June 16, in San Francisco, California.
Read the ACM press release.

ACM Honors Computing Innovators for Advances in Research, Education and Industry
ACM has announced the winners of five prestigious awards for their innovations in computing technology that have made significant contributions that enable computer science to solve real world challenges. These awards reflect achievements in human-computer interaction, complex data structure applications, computer science education, geographical information science, computer simulation for biological research, and open-source software development tools. The 2011 ACM award winners, from internationally known research and academic institutions, include prominent computer scientists, educators, and industry leaders: ACM will present these and other awards at the ACM Awards Banquet on June 16 in San Francisco, California.
Read the ACM press release.

ACM Women's Council Honors Leader in Reliability of Computer Systems with Athena Lecturer Award
ACM's Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W) has named Nancy Lynch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the 2012–2013 Athena Lecturer. She developed mathematical approaches to understanding the capabilities of distributed systems, which rely on multiple processors for computation and coordination. These systems include traditional wired networks, modern mobile communications, cloud computing systems, parallel computers, and embedded computers in factory machinery. Her contributions include modeling and proof techniques, algorithms, and impossibility results that are now in the toolbox of computer scientists who design distributed systems. The Athena Lecturer award celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. It includes a $10,000 honorarium provided by Google Inc. Lynch's Athena Lecture will be delivered at the 2013 joint meeting of the Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC) and the Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA) sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Groups on Algorithms and Computational Theory (SIGACT) and Computer Architecture (SIGARCH). The award will be presented at the ACM Annual Awards Banquet, June 16, in San Francisco, California.
Read the ACM press release.
ACM home page announcement

ACM's Slate of Candidates for Its 2012 General Election
ACM has assembled its slate of candidates for President, Vice President, and Secretary/Treasurer (for the 2012 to 2014 term), and Members at Large (2012 to 2016). Statements and biographical sketches of all candidates are on the ACM Elections page and also appear in the May 2012 issue of Communications of the ACM.

Awards

Barbara Liskov Named to Inventors Hall of Fame
Barbara Liskov, winner of the 2008 ACM A.M. Turing Award, has been named as one of the 2012 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which honors individuals who have "conceived, patented, and advanced the great technological achievements since the birth of our nation." Liskov is cited as "an innovator in the design of computer programming languages, largely for helping to make computer programs more reliable, secure, and easy to use. Her innovations can be found within almost all modern programming languages." Other Hall of Fame inductees include Steve Jobs and Gary Starkweather, credited with creating the first laser printer, for Xerox. Read more in the Computing Community Consortium blog.

Susan Landau Wins Guggenheim Fellowship
Susan Landau, an ACM Fellow and member of the ACM-W Executive Committee, has been named a 2012 Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation. She is the only Fellow in the Computer Science category. Landau is involved in cybersecurity, privacy, and public policy issues, and has testified for the House Judiciary Committee on the security risks in wiretapping, and for the House Science Committee on cybersecurity activities at NIST's Information Technology Laboratory. She is currently a Visiting Scholar in Harvard's Computer Science Department.

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 June 1.

Conferences and Events

CHI 2012 to Focus on Importance of User Experience in Design
The ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems will emphasize the user experience in all aspects of design—from models and theory to hands-on interactivity. Set for May 5 to 12 in Austin, Texas, CHI 2012 will unite the design, engineering, management and user experience communities in cross-disciplinary sessions ranging from machine learning to accessibility, and navigation to thermal interfaces. Scheduled keynote speakers are Margaret Gould Stewart of YouTube, on "Connecting the World through Video"; and Hugh Herr of MIT Media Lab, on "Designing Intelligent Orthotics and Prosthetics."

SIGMOD/PODS 2012 to Explore New Frontiers in Management of Data
ACM SIGMOD/PODS 2012 takes place May 20 to 24 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The SIGMOD conference is a leading international forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences. The PODS symposium series is a premier annual forum for communicating advances in the theoretical foundations of database systems. This year's event also includes 11 affiliated workshops focusing on cutting-edge topics that are relevant to the current data management research and development, including semantic web, structured data, and social networking. Scheduled keynote speakers for SIGMOD are Pat Hanrahan, CANON USA Professor at Stanford University, and Amin M. Vahdat, Science Applications International Corporation Chair and computer science professor at University of California San Diego. The scheduled keynote speaker for PODS is Surajit Chaudhuri, an ACM Fellow and principal researcher at Microsoft Research.

ICSE 2012 Studies "Sustainable Software for a Sustainable World"
ICSE 2012, the International Conference on Software Engineering co-sponsored by ACM SIGSOFT, provides a forum for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences and issues in the field of software engineering. The conference, taking place June 2 to 9 in Zurich, Switzerland will host an ACM Student Research Competition, where students can present their research results to conference attendees and compete for prizes. A "New Ideas and Emerging Results" track will give presenters an opportunity to receive early feedback on novel research ideas and promising work that has not yet been fully evaluated. Scheduled keynote speakers are Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, New York; Frank-Dieter Clesle, Vice President of On-Demand Content as a Service Infrastructure at SAP Sustainability Lab, Markdorf, Germany; and Jeff Kramer, Senior Dean at Imperial College London.

DAC 2012 Presents Latest Technologies in Design Automation
The 49th Design Automation Conference (DAC 2012), the premier event for the design of electronic circuits and systems, offers technical presentations in areas such as low-power design, reliability, simulation, and optimization. Workshops will address bio-design automation, CMOS design, and other topics. Co-located conferences will cover Design for Manufacturing and Yield and Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust, and panels and special sessions will discuss High-Level Synthesis, EDA in the Cloud, Power Efficient Mobile Design, and Parallelization and Software Development. Scheduled keynote speakers are C.L. Liu of National Tsing Hua University; Mike Muller of ARM, Inc.; Joshua Friedman of IBM Server and Technology Group; and Brad Heaney, Intel Corp. A Student Research Competition and Workshop for Women in Electronic Design will also be part of the conference. DAC takes place in San Francisco June 3 to 7.

GHC 2012 Grace Hopper Celebration Registration Opens June 1
The 12th Annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women of Computing (GHC 2012), presented by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, is the world's largest gathering of women in computing. The Grace Hopper Celebration will take place from October 3 to 6 in Baltimore, Maryland. This year's theme, "Are We There Yet?", recognizes that technology and the culture of technology are continuously evolving. Scheduled keynote speakers are Nora Denzel of Intuit, and Anita K. Jones of the University of Virginia. Confirmed technical speakers hail from a variety of corporate and academic institutions, including Microsoft Research, WellPoint, University of Massachusetts, UCLA, and PepsiCo. Registration opens June 1.

ACM-BCB 2012 Opens Call for Participation
The ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Biomedicine (ACM-BCB) is the main flagship conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Bioinformatics. Set in Orlando, Florida from October 7 to 10, this event will provide a premier forum for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research encompassing disciplines of computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics, and biomedicine. The conference is seeking submissions of papers, posters, workshops, and tutorials, in subject areas including Genomics and Evolution; Protein and RNA Structure; Computational Systems Biology; Medical Informatics; Immunoinformatics; Computational Epidemiology; Databases; Text Mining and Natural Language Processing; and more. See the important dates page for deadlines, and the conference website for submission information.

SIGITE/RIIT 2012 Opens Call for Participation
The 13th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education and the 1st Annual Research in IT Conference (SIGITE/RIIT) will be held concurrently in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, October 11 to 13. The dual-conference format provides a forum for sharing and developing ideas relating to information technology research, education, applications, IT-industry-academia relationships, and the roles professionals, educators, and advocates play in the effective use of IT. The aim of the new IT Research Conference is to provide a venue for showcasing research in information technology that may or may not have a connection with teaching IT. These two conferences, carrying the joint theme of "Working Together: Research & Education for IT," will be co-located and tightly integrated; attendees will be able to attend sessions of both (which are sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Technology Education (SIGITE) at no additional charge. Submissions of papers, posters and panels are due June 1.

SPLASH 2012 Opens Call for Participation
SPLASH, the conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity, takes place October 19 to 26 in Tucson, Arizona. Formerly known as OOPSLA, the conference has opened its submisions process for content relating to all aspects of programming languages and software engineering. The deadline for submissions for posters, doctoral symposia, films, Student Research Competition, and student volunteer applications is July 9. Dynamic Languages Symposium submissions are due July 11. Demonstrations are due July 15.

Public Policy

USACM Comments on Process for Consumer Privacy Codes of Conduct
Earlier this month, USACM submitted comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on the proposed process for developing consumer privacy codes of conduct. This is part of the broader Obama Administration effort announced in Feburary to establish and implement a Consumer Data Privacy Bill of Rights. The NTIA is responsible for convening a multi-stakeholder process to help develop consumer privacy codes of conduct in various aspects of online activity. The comments were developed by Stuart Shapiro and other members of the Privacy and Security Committee of USACM. They expressed support for "the need for a transparent process for developing the enforceable codes of conduct that would help implement the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights ('Bill of Rights'). Trust in how these codes are developed and enforced will go a long way to foster trust in the Bill of Rights and in consumers' ability to use the information infrastructure." You can read their comments in full here.
 
Member Programs

Become an Ambassador for ACM!
ACM members like you are our greatest source of new members. Your first-hand experience with ACM's valuable career development and continuous learning programs makes you a perfect envoy to share your ACM experiences. That's why we're now calling this program Ambassadors for ACM. Along with a new name, we've refreshed the referral process as well as recruitment tips and opportunities for prizes, rewards and bonus gifts. Grand prizes for the 2011–2012 year now include an Android tablet and a Nook eBook reader. The top ACM Ambassador for March was Faisal Alghayadh. Learn more about new rules, recruitment tips and tools, as well as rewards and prizes by visiting the Ambassadors for ACM site.

Live Chat Feature Now Available to Members
ACM's new interactive Live Chat feature provides members with an opportunity for real-time customer service from our Member Service Representatives. To start your chat, simply log in to myACM with your ACM web account username and password and click on the Live Chat icon. Live chat is available Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET. Any chats attempted after hours will automatically generate an email to ACM to be answered during regular business hours.

Auto and Home Insurance Benefit Available from Liberty Mutual
As an ACM member you could receive exclusive savings on your auto and home insurance. Plus, with Liberty Mutual, you get service and support when and where you need it. To learn more about Liberty Mutual insurance or to get a free, no-obligation quote, please visit http://www.libertymutual.com/acm or call 1-800-524-9400 and refer to group #8559.

Attention Faculty: Order Complimentary Materials for Your Students
ACM offers the opportunity for faculty members to order complimentary materials for distribution to their students who are interested in the field of computing. Available items include ACM student membership brochures and posters, as well as flyers featuring ACM's Digital Library, Code of Ethics, and student chapters, among others. Place your order using our easy online form and your request will be fulfilled promptly!
 
Learning Center

New Tech Pack Covers Business Intelligence and Data Management for Decision-Making
Business Intelligence is undergoing more significant change than at any time since the early '90s, mainly due to advances in processor and memory technology, database advances, the explosion of non-traditional information being captured and analyzed (often referred to as "big data"), and changes in the social use of computer technology driven by Web 2.0. ACM's newest Tech Pack, Business Intelligence and Data Management, gives a comprehensive overview of these two essential tools for decision-making. On the BI side, you'll learn about reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining and predictive analytics. In the Data Management area, you'll learn how to turn data into an organizational asset by combining it with business intelligence tools and technologies for decision-making.

The Tech Pack includes the insights of TP Co-Chairs Patricia Cupoli, an Enterprise Data Architect and editor of The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge, and Stephen Petschulat, Senior Architect at SAP Research; and TP Committee members Barry Devlin, one of the founders of the data warehousing industry and author of Data Warehouse—from Architecture to Implementation, and Raymond Ng, Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, internationally renowned for his data mining studies.

ACM Expands Online Book Collection with Morgan Kaufmann, Syngress Titles
Due to popular demand, ACM has added new books to your e-library. All ACM members, both student and professional, now have access to more than 130 titles from publishers Morgan Kaufmann (MK) and Syngress. Morgan Kaufmann is a respected publisher of computer sciences titles spanning Artificial Intelligence, Computer Networking, Computer Architecture, Computer Graphics and Game Development, Data Management and Business Intelligence, Software Engineering, and User Experience and Human Computer Interaction. Syngress specializes in books on Digital Forensics, Hacking and Penetration Testing, Certification, IT Security and Administration, and more. All MK and Syngress titles are part of the ACM EBOOK catalog, are available in PDF format (and some in ePub), and are downloadable to your desktop, laptop, tablet, and any popular e-book reader on your mobile device.

ACM Revises eBook Catalog
Finding an online book in the ACM Learning Center just got a lot easier. Next time you log in, you'll notice our online book collection has a new look. Click on the EBOOKS tab, under the BOOKS & VIDEOS menu in the top navigation, and you'll find all books contained in ACM's collection: books from Safari Books Online, Books 24x7, and the newly added titles from Morgan Kaufmann and Syngress, more than 1,200 books in all. Our eBook collection is now broken down into the following categories, using the BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications) classification scheme: Artificial Intelligence, Business Software, Certification, Computer Architecture, Computer Engineering, Computer Graphics, Computer Science, Computers, Database Management, Engineering, Handheld Computing, Information Technology, Internet, Management Information Systems, Mathematical Analysis, Networking, Operating Systems, Personal Computers, Professional Development, Programming Languages, Security, Software Development, User Interfaces, Windows, World Wide Web, and XML. Safari Video titles are accessible through the SAFARI VIDEOS link under the EBOOKS tab.

Save the Date! June 28 Learning Webinar on Business Intelligence
On June 28, ACM will present its next free live learning webinar. Barry Devlin, one of the "fathers" of Data Warehousing and a co-editor of the ACM Business Intelligence Tech Pack, will talk about decision making in a new "biz-tech ecosystem" where business and technology have become symbiotic and collaborative behavior is the norm. The webinar will explore the meaning and emergence of the biz-tech ecosystem; the re-convergence of operational and informational systems; data, information and knowledge; "Millennials" and team decision-making; and architectural models for 2013 and beyond. Look for a registration link in your inbox and on the ACM Learning Center in the coming weeks.

ACM Learning Webinar on Security Now Available on Demand
ACM's free learning webinar, "Security: Computing in an Adversarial Environment," is now available on demand. The popular April 12 webinar, presented by Carrie Gates, Senior Vice President and Director of Research, CA Labs, and moderated by Christopher W. Clifton, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Purdue University, introduces the fundamentals of security, describes the security mindset, and highlights why achieving security is difficult. Click here to register and access the webinar on demand, and be sure to share this with friends and colleagues who may be interested in this topic.
 
Career & Job Center

Import Your LinkedIn Profile in ACM's Career & Job Center
Be sure to visit ACM's Career & Job Center to update your résumé or create a new one in the Résumé Bank. ACM members' résumés include an ACM logo on their entry, highlighting their ACM membership to employers.

Now available when posting a résumé in the Résumé Bank: import your LinkedIn profile. You will be required to sign in to your LinkedIn account. Please note that LinkedIn does not have exactly the same fields as ACM so you will have to review the imported information and update where necessary. Once you have a résumé created and saved in our system, you can publish it to the Résumé Bank so that employers find you! Or keep it private and use it when applying online for jobs. Log in to ACM's Job Board and post your résumé today. You can also upgrade to a Preferred Résumé to keep it at the top of the Résumé Bank, highlighted with a star next to it for increased visibility ($25 for 90 days).

In addition, ACM offers CareerNews, which provides summaries of articles on career-related topics of interest to students and professionals in the computing field, in a bi-weekly email alert to ACM members. ACM members can subscribe to the CareerNews email alert service.

For more information about the Career & Job Center please contact Jennifer Ruzicka.
 
Education

CS2013 Computing Curricula Strawman Draft Available for Review
The Joint ACM/IEEE-CS Task Force on Computing Curricula has completed the Strawman draft of the CS2013 computing curricula guidelines and it is now available for review. To comment on the draft, please read the guidelines and instructions. Following a roughly 10-year cycle, the ACM and IEEE Computer Society jointly sponsor the development of a Computing Curricula volume on Computer Science. These volumes have helped to set international curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs in computing.
 
Student News

Deadline for ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards May 4 (see story under Chapters News)

Computing Community Consortium's New Site Lists Undergraduate Summer Research Positions
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is offering a new website listing undergraduate summer research positions. The listings are linked from the CCC's relatively new Computer Science Research Opportunities & Graduate School (CSGS) site, a resource clearinghouse for CS undergraduates. Researchers will be able to post their summer research opportunities on the listing site for free. The site will enable students to find summer research programs, and will enable the CCC to promote a pipeline of young talent for careers in computing research. The CSGS site provides information on summer research opportunities, a Q&A on "why do research," and links to summer programs from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Research Experiences for Undergraduates, the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research, and Canadian Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates, among others. Students also will be able to find information and advice on applying to graduate school in computing fields.

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 winners presented at AOSD 2012 and CGO 2012. The next conferences accepting submissions are: Learn about more competitions on the SRC submissions page.

CRA's URO Zone Connects Students with Opportunities for Undergraduate Research
The Computing Research Association (CRA) recently launched a website to help undergraduate students identify computing research opportunities. The site—URO Zone, for Undergraduate Research Opportunities—provides links to a range of summer undergraduate research resources. It also posts profiles of undergraduates and details their recent computing research projects. URO Zone offers guidelines to help discover research opportunities in a variety of areas, from applied to theoretical computer science. It also defines specific research fields, describes CRA and ACM undergraduate awards programs, and lists links for finding computing research opportunities.

ACM-W Student Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences
The ACM Women's Council (ACM-W), with funding from Wipro Technologies, provides support for women undergraduate or graduate students in computer science and related programs who wish to attend research conferences. The student does not have to present a paper at the conference she attends. High school students will also be considered for conference support. As of 2011, 20 ACM-W/Wipro scholarships are funded annually: 10 scholarships of up to $600 will be awarded for intra-continental conference travel, and 10 scholarships of up to $1,200 will be awarded for intercontinental conference travel. ACM-W encourages the student's home department to match the scholarship award and recognize the student's achievement locally within her department. In addition, if the award is for attendance at one of several ACM special interest group conferences (SIGACCESS, SIGACT, SIGARCH, SIGCOMM, SIGCSE, SIGDA, SIGECOM, SIGSOFT, SIGGRAPH, SIGITE, SIGOPS, and SIGPLAN), the SIG will provide complementary conference registration and a mentor during the conference. Applications are evaluated in six groups each year, in order to distribute awards across a range of conferences. For application form, notification dates and more information, please visit the scholarships page.

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.
 
Distinguished Speakers Program

Featured Distinguished Speaker: Anne Condon
The Distinguished Speakers Program (DSP) is one of ACM's most valued outreach programs, providing universities, corporations, event and conference planners, and local ACM chapters with direct access to top technology leaders and innovators from nearly every sector of the computing industry.

This month's featured speaker is Anne Condon. She is a professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at University of British Columbia. She received her Bachelor's degree in 1982 from University College Cork, Ireland, and her Ph.D. in 1987 from the University of Washington's Computer Science Department. Anne was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin at Madison from 1987 until 1999, and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Science at UBC from 2007 to 2010. Much of Anne's current research focuses on development of computational tools that help biologists understand the structure and function of RNA molecules. Anne is an ACM Fellow and has won an ACM Distinguished Dissertation Award, an NSF National Young Investigator Award and the University College Cork Distinguished Alumna Award. She held the NSERC/General Motors Canada Chair for Women in Science and Engineering for British Columbia and the Yukon from 2004 to 2009, and received the Computing Research Association's 2010 Habermann Award for outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community.

For more information on Anne, please visit her DSP speaker information page.
Anne Condon's Digital Library author page.

ACM's Distinguished Speakers Program Expands to Colleges, Universities, Corporations
ACM's Distinguished Speakers Program (DSP) is expanding its venues for delivering compelling content on computing and IT to colleges, universities, and corporations. Previously available only to ACM Local Chapters, the DSP technology leaders and innovators offer more than 250 presentations on topics covering software engineering, high performance computing, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, gaming, mobile computing, and dozens more. Nearly 100 speakers can be booked through the ACM DSP to educate technical staff, ramp up the knowledge of teams, provide opportunities for direct speaker interaction, and boost attendance at meetings and events. ACM's Distinguished Speakers represent prominent companies, colleges and universities from around the world. These renowned thought leaders have proven abilities to address current issues, including Electronic Voting in the 21st Century; Software Engineering Best Practices; Software Under Siege: Viruses and Worms; Spatial Databases and Geographic Information Systems; and Careers in Computing—How to Prepare and What to Expect.

Read more about the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program and how to search for and select speakers on the DSP home page.
 
Chapters News

Deadline for ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards Nominations May 4
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 this award in five key areas:
  • Chapter Activities
  • Website
  • Community Service
  • Recruitment
  • School Service
Winning chapters in each of these five areas receive $500 and a "best of" icon to proudly display on their chapter's Web page. These chapters are featured on the ACM website and in ACM MemberNet. To be considered for one or more of these awards, ACM student chapters must submit an application in Word or Plain Text format (please, no PDFs), to [email protected]. In the subject line please state your chapter name and the categories for which you would like your chapter to be considered.
Applications should be received by ACM no later than May 4, 2012 (deadline extended) to be considered for the award.

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 were chartered March 21 to April 20, 2012:

ACM Student Chapters:
  • Bharath University ACM Student Chapter, Chennai, India
  • Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology ACM Student Chapter, Old Delhi, India
  • JIIT ACM Student Chapter, Noida, India
  • Lewis University ACM Chapter, Romeoville, Illinois
  • MTSU ACM SIGGRAPH Student Chapter, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
  • MUET ACM Student Chapter, Jamshoro, Pakistan
  • SJBIT ACM Student Chapter, Bangalore, India
  • South Asian University ACM Student Chapter, New Delhi, India
  • UAA ACM Student Chapter, Anchorage, Alaska
  • University of Canberra ACM Student Chapter, Canberra, Australia
  • Velammal Institute of Technology IT ACM Student Chapter, Chennai, India
ACM-W News

ACM Women's Council Honors Leader in Reliability of Computer Systems with Athena Lecturer Award (see story under "Awards")

Indiana Celebration of Women in Computing Leverages Partnerships for Mentoring
By Gloria Townsend, Founder, Grace Hopper Regional Celebrations Project
In February, 150 women from central Indiana attended the fifth Indiana Celebration of Women in Computing (INWIC) in Spencer, Indiana. The women enjoyed two keynote addresses by Katie Siek (University of Colorado, Boulder) and Nadine Shillingford (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology); presentations by Joanne Cohoon (University of Virginia), Barbara Gee (Anita Borg Institute) and Erin Donahue (Microsoft); and a special game designed for our conference by Studio Cypher, involving female pioneers in computing and puzzles. Another popular component involved an Impostor Panel organized by Katie and Erin, joined by Sarah Loos (Carnegie Mellon), where attendees received guidance for internalizing their accomplishments.

Innovative elements of INWIC included collaboration with the National Center for Women & IT (NCWIT) and with the Indiana STARS Alliance. NCWIT's Aspirations in Computing high school award winners and Indiana STARS high school girls involved in an outreach project were welcomed to the conference.

The conference received an unusually large amount of support from several industries, including gold sponsors: Microsoft Research, the Anita Borg Institute, Interactive Intelligence and West-Monroe Partners. In fact, "partnerships" seemed to be the keyword for the conference.

The Grace Hopper Regional Consortium, a project of ACM-W, provides programming that showcases female role models, encourages mentoring and networking, supplies accurate information about computing careers and creates opportunities for women to participate in the program, often for the first time in their careers. Visit the Grace Hopper Regional Consortium site to learn more about these events.

Join ACM-W's Membership Email List
Did you know that ACM-W offers a general email distribution list for its members? This ACMW-public list is a communication channel for disseminating general information about ACM-W, bulletins and upcoming events. To join the list: http://signup.acm.org/listserv_index.cfm?ln=ACM-W-PUBLIC.
And to keep more informed about the activities of ACM-W and its members, you can sign up for our quarterly CIS Newsletter notification. Be sure to read the current issue for the latest news on ACM-W activities and events on the ACM-W CIS Newsletter issues page.
 
Publications News

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology Seeks New Editor-in-Chief
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), covering all areas of software engineering research, is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due June 14.

CACM Reports: Computational Tools for Mapping Proteins to Analyze the Human Cell
The shift in modern biological research has led to the emergence of computational methods for measuring the protein building blocks of the human cell. The resulting technology revolution has spurred interest in the comparative analysis of protein networks, with important applications in disease diagnosis and therapy. In the May Communications of the ACM (CACM) cover story, researchers Nir Atias and Roden Sharan of Tel Aviv University survey this new field to assess the arising computational challenges, and the need for practical solutions that can cope with an ever growing scale. Also in this issue, Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi revisits the intense reaction from scholarly publishers to the Research Works Act introduced in Congress last December, which limits access to federally funded research. He identifies the underlying issue as a divergence of interests between authors and publishers, and considers ways to resolve the tension between the desire for the broadest possible dissemination and the need to cover the cost of publishing, including ACM's fair-access approach.

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 in print, Web and digital format.
Read the press release.

ACM Queue Presents: CPU DB: Recording Microprocessor History
Mark Horowitz, the Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department and the Yahoo! Founders Professor at Stanford University, describes Stanford's CPU DB project in a new article for ACM Queue. Processors have come a long way from the Intel 4004 in 1971, with a clock speed of 740KHz, and CPU DB shows the details of where and when the gains have occured. Additionally, by looking at hundreds of processors over the past four decades, Horowitz and his students are able to separate the effect of technology scaling from improvements in other areas, including software.

Subscribe to Communications of the ACM
Subscribe to Communications of the ACM the computing industry's most trusted source for news, analysis and insights! Non-members can use our online form and receive a new ACM membership with your 12-month subscription, or request a sample issue using our online free trial issue form.

ACM in the News

"Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Deals With 5 Top Universities"
The New York Times, April 18, 2012
Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller (2007 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award winner) recently received $16 million in venture capital funding and formed partnerships with five universities to form Coursera, a Web portal for distributing a broad array of interactive courses in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, and engineering.

"UChicago to Host North American Programming Contest April 14–15"
UChicago News, April 10, 2012
Computer programming teams from across North America will compete for $12,000 in prize money, including a $4,500 grand prize, at the University of Chicago Invitational Programming contest April 14–15. The invitational is a tuneup for the 22 North American teams that qualified for ACM's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) 2012 World Finals May 17 in Warsaw, Poland.

"Giving Women the Access Code"
The New York Times, April 2, 2012
When former ACM President Maria Klawe became president of Harvey Mudd in 2006, she immediately turned her focus to increasing the number of women in computer science. This year, almost 40 percent of Harvey Mudd's computer science degrees will go to women.

"To Convince People, Come at Them from Different Angles"
Cornell Chronicle , April 2, 2012
Cornell research on Facebook users' behavior demonstrates that people base decisions on the variety of social contexts rather than on the number of requests received. "Each of us is sitting at a crossroads between the social circles we inhabit," observes Cornell professor and 2008 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award winner Jon Kleinberg. "When a message comes at you from several directions, it may be more effective."

"Sound Waves Allow Computer to Detect and Obey Gestures"
MSNBC.com, March 21, 2012
Researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington in Seattle have created a program that lets people turn almost any computer, including laptops, into a gesture-controlled machine, according to a paper published for the ACM SIGCHI conference starting May 5.
 

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