ACM MemberNet - May 24, 2012

Welcome to the May 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 SIG Awards 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 Elects Vint Cerf as President
Vinton G. Cerf has been elected ACM president for a two-year term beginning July 1. Cerf, who is Chief Internet Evangelist at Google Inc., said his vision as president is to take advantage of the global networking infrastructure to invite open dialog with ACM's worldwide membership. He also noted the need to increase the accessibility and utility of ACM's burgeoning online content, which includes its publications and conferences. Currently, Cerf serves as General Chair of the ACM Turing Centenary Celebration, to be held June 15-16 in San Francisco, California. Also elected to two-year terms were Vice President Alexander L. Wolf of Imperial College London, UK, and Secretary-Treasurer Vicki L. Hanson of the University of Dundee, Scotland. In addition, Members-at-Large elected to four-year terms include Eric Allman, chief science officer for Sendmail Inc.; Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo! vice president of Research for Europe and Latin America; Radia Perlman, director of Network Technology at Intel; Mary Lou Soffa, professor and chair of the University of Virginia Computer Science Department; and Eugene H. Spafford, professor at Purdue University and executive director of the Purdue Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), and chair of the ACM US Public Policy Council. The new officers elected by ACM professional members represent the more than 100,000 computing professionals and students who comprise ACM's international membership.
Read the ACM press release.

Watch an ACM Podcast Interview with Turing Award Winner Judea Pearl
Stephen Ibaraki recently interviewed Judea Pearl, winner of the 2011 ACM A.M. Turing Award. The interview reveals the fascinating role of philosophy and empirical science in Pearl's work, which encompasses probability, causality, and counterfactual thinking. Pearl discusses the influence of education on his success and the challenges of educating future generations. He also illuminates his interests in cognitive science, computation, and physics as well as his work at RCA Research Laboratories, and the transition into academia. We also learn how Pearl's attempt to filter out uncertainty and noisy data has profound implications for a variety of applications. Among them are machine reasoning, natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, computational biology, econometrics, cognitive science, statistics, philosophy, psychology, epidemiology and social science.

Visit the ACM Podcast page for the full list of interviews with computing community leaders.

ACM Recognizes Leaders Who Shaped Future for Computer and Engineering Professionals, Educators, Policymakers
ACM has announced the winners of two awards whose recipients set the stage for advances in computing that influenced practitioners, researchers, educators and policymakers throughout the world. Distinguished Service Award winner William Wulf of the University of Virginia and Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award winner Kelly Gotlieb of the University of Toronto touched a broad range of computer disciplines with their focus on building information infrastructures, promoting recognition of innovation and achievement, and initiating educational and funding opportunities to sustain the growth of computational thinking. ACM also announced the winner of the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, Seth Cooper of the University of Washington, for his research on video games to solve scientific problems. Wulf, Gotlieb, and Cooper will be honored at the ACM Awards Banquet on June 16 in San Francisco, California.
Read the ACM press release.

Russian, Polish Universities Take Top Spots in ACM ICPC Programming Contest
Russian Federation universities placed first, third, and tenth, and a Polish university took second place among the top rankings in the 2012 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC), which concluded last week. First place went to St. Petersburg State University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics, with the University of Warsaw in second, followed by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in third. Two Belarus universities and three Chinese universities finished in the top 12 rankings, along with an American university, a Canadian institution, and a Japanese university. The competition pits teams of three university students against nine complex, real-world problems and a demanding five-hour deadline. Now in its 36th year, this international competition has been run by ACM since the mid-1970s as the world's premiere programming contest. Financial and systems support for ACM-ICPC is provided by IBM. The contest took place in Warsaw, Poland with 122 teams competing in the final round. Earlier rounds of the competition included nearly 30,000 contestants representing 2,200 universities from 85 countries. The top four teams won gold medals as well as employment or internship offers from IBM. See the full results of the competition.
Read the ACM press release.

Closure for Jim Gray's Disappearance
Jim Gray, who won the ACM A.M. Turing Award in 1998, was best known for his seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research, which made possible such applications as the cash machine and databases like Google's. His sailboat vanished off the coast of San Francisco on January 28, 2007 and was never found. A court in San Francisco has granted a petition by Donna Carnes, Gray's widow, to establish her husband's death under California law, which allows for such a determination when a missing person has not been heard from for five continuous years. ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and University of California, Berkeley paid tribute to Gray in May 2008 at a special ceremony at UC Berkeley.
Read the New York Times blog post.

Awards

ACM, IEEE Computer Society Honor Innovator of Dependability of Critical Computer Systems with Eckert-Mauchly Award
ACM and the IEEE Computer Society will jointly present the Eckert-Mauchly Award to Algirdas Avizienis of the University of California, Los Angeles for fundamental contributions to fault-tolerant computer architecture and computer arithmetic. His conceptual designs led to construction of the Self-Testing and Repairing (STAR) computer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology, which was instrumental to the JPL mission to explore space. The Eckert-Mauchly Award is known as the computer architecture community's most prestigious award. Avizienis will receive the 2012 Eckert-Mauchly Award at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 12, in Portland, OR.

ACM and the IEEE Computer Society co-sponsor the Eckert-Mauchly Award, which was initiated in 1979. It recognizes contributions to computer and digital systems architecture and comes with a $5,000 prize. The award was named for John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, who collaborated on the design and construction of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the pioneering large-scale electronic computing machine, which was completed in 1947.
Read the ACM press release.

ACM Presents Special Awards to 2012 Intel Science Fair Finalists
ACM presented seven Special Awards to finalists in the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world's largest high school science research competition, held in May in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. More than 1,540 young entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists competed to reach the finals from the 446 affiliate fairs in 68 countries, regions and territories. Judges provided by ACM for the event included John (Tim) Korb of Purdue University. Also among the ISEF judges were Robb Cutler, co-founder of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), and Lynn Andrea Stein of Olin College of Engineering. ACM presents awards of $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $300 for third place, and $200 for fourth place. All winners receive complimentary ACM Student Memberships for the duration of their undergraduate education. Here are ACM's ISEF Special Award winners and their breakthrough research topics:
First Award of $1,000:
"Geolocation of Photographs by Horizon Matching with Digital Elevation Models"
Samuel Wye Pritt, 17, Pritt Home School, Walkersville, Maryland
 
Second Award of $500:
"Generalized Quantum Tic-Tac-Toe"
Ananya Kumar, 17, and Yan Sheng Ang, 18, NUS High School of Mathematics and Science, Singapore
 
Third Award of $300:
"Apodora: Markov Chain-Inspired Microsearch"
Nicholas Benjamin Schiefer, 17, Holy Trinity School, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada
 
Fourth Award of $200:
"Pediacenter"
William Barbaro, 17, Carroll High School, Dayton, Ohio
 
"Modeling the Adaptive Venation Network of Physarum polycephalum"
Hannah Louise Blumberg, 17, Paul D. Schreiber High School, Port Washington, New York
 
"Navigation for the Visually Impaired"
Natalie Janet Nash, 17, Vincentian High School, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 
"Dynamic Pathfinding: Chasing Enemies on Random Graphs"
David Lu, 16, Stuyvesant High School, New York, New York, and
Andre Asher Arslan, 16, Hunter College High School, New York, New York
Call for 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 Ken Kennedy Award: July 1
Please take a moment to consider those individuals in your community who may be suitable for nomination. Refer to http://www.acm.org/nominations for nomination guidelines and the complete listing of Award Subcommittee Chairs and Members.

Member Recognition

Call for ACM Senior and Distinguished 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.

The Distinguished 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 August 1. Please read Advice to Members Seeking ACM Distinction, by past Committee Co-chairs Marc Snir and Telle Whitney.

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

JCDL 2012 Provides International Forum on Digital Libraries
The ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2012) is a major international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, organizational, and social issues. Co-sponsored by IEEE-CS and ACM's Special Interest Groups on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) and Hypertext and the Web (SIGWEB), JCDL addresses a broad spectrum of topical areas, and is open to all emerging and established educators, industry leaders, researchers, and students working in the field of digital library research and development. Technical sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters and demonstrations, and a doctoral consortium will cover topics from data mining to e-publishing and digital depositories. Invited keynote speakers include George Dyson, author of Turing's Cathedral; Carole Goble, a computer science professor at the University of Manchester; and Jason Scott, an American archivist and technology historian. This year's conference takes place in Washington, D.C. June 10 to 14.

SIGGRAPH 2012 Early Registration Open through June 18
SIGGRAPH 2012, the International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, is a five-day interdisciplinary educational experience including a commercial exhibition that attracts hundreds of exhibitors from around the world. The conference takes place August 7 to 9 in Los Angeles. SIGGRAPH is widely recognized as the most prestigious forum for the publication of computer graphics research. In addition to SIGGRAPH's leading-edge technical program, the conference's installations provide close-up views of the latest in digital art, emerging technologies, and hands-on opportunities for creative collaboration. The conference also hosts the international SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival, showcasing works from the world's most innovative and accomplished digital film and video creators. Online registration is now available.

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

ACM Director of Public Policy Named to STEM Education Caucus Steering Committee
ACM's Director of Public Policy Cameron Wilson has been named to the STEM Education Caucus Steering Committee. Wilson will work with Congressional STEM Education Caucus co-chairs Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) to advance the importance of education initiatives for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. His focus will be to emphasize the role of computer science in the STEM agenda. Steering Committee participants are committed to a strategic STEM agenda, which is integral to the development of the next generation of the computing workforce. The Steering Committee aims to strengthen STEM education at all levels (K-12, higher education and workforce) by providing a forum for Congress and the science, education and business communities to discuss challenges, problems and solutions related to STEM education.
Read the ACM press release.
 
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 April was P. Udhaya Girish. 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.

Discounted Subscription to The Exascale Report Now Available to ACM Members
ACM members save $188 on a subscription to The Exascale Report, a publication focusing on exascale levels of computation, the next great challenge and breakthrough in High Performance Computing. The Exascale Report is pleased to offer a special, discounted subscription rate to all ACM members—only $100 per year, a savings of $188 over the regular price. Go to http://www.acm.org/membership/discounts/exascale1127 to learn more about this publication and how to subscribe.
 
Learning Center

Register for Free ACM Learning Webinar on Business Intelligence and Big Data
On Thursday, June 28 at 12 p.m. EDT, the ACM Learning Center presents a free webinar by data warehousing guru Barry Devlin. "2012—Big Data: End of the World or End of BI?" covers 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. Barry Devlin is among the foremost authorities on business insight and one of the founders of data warehousing, having published the first architectural paper on the topic in 1988. Ankur Teredesai is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma and Information Officer of SIGKDD, ACM's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. Register for the live webcast.

ACM Member Discount on NYU-Poly Online Master's Degree in Cybersecurity with Management Track
Tune in Tuesday, May 29, 6 to 7 p.m. EDT, when NYU-Poly hosts a live webcast designed to introduce students to the online Cybersecurity Program with Management Track. Attend and learn about how this degree can help you obtain the knowledge and skills necessary to manage a team of cyber security experts. ACM members receive a 10% tuition discount when studying online at NYU-Poly. To register for this webcast, visit the NYU-ePoly Cybersecurity sign up page. The deadline to apply for the Fall 2012 semester is June 30. For more information, call 877-50-EPOLY, visit www.poly.edu/nyuepoly or email [email protected].
 
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

ACM, CSTA Issue Statement on Next Generation Science Standards Draft
The first public draft of the Next Generation Science Standards provides a valuable step in the collaborative, state-led effort to rethink, update, and reinvent how core scientific ideas and practices are taught to US students from kindergarten to high school. The proposed changes for modernizing science education will encourage students to use computer-based modeling and simulations for generating and analyzing scientific data. Although the proposed standards represent a positive step, ACM and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) are concerned that they will require students to use computer science principles but will fail to teach them an understanding of those principles. Given the growing importance of computer science to the broader science field, ACM and CSTA urge the adoption of computer science as a core part of science standards, curricula, and assessments.
Read the ACM press release.

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. The comment period will close on July 15.
 
Student News

ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals Winners
The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), sponsored by Microsoft Research, offers 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. There are two rounds of competition at each conference hosting an SRC, which culminates in a Grand Finals competition. All undergraduate and graduate student winners from the SRCs held during the year advance to the SRC Grand Finals, where they are evaluated by a different panel of judges via the Web. This year's SRC Grand Finals winners are, in the Graduate Division: Hyungsin Kim, Georgia Institute of Technology; Yuan Tian, Auburn University; and Matthias Wilhelm, Technical University of Kaiserslautern. In the Undergraduate Division the winners are: Sarah Chasins, Swarthmore College; and Vanessa Pena Araya, Universidad de Chile. The winners are invited, along with their advisors, to attend the annual ACM Awards Banquet in San Francisco, California on June 16, where they will receive formal recognition.

Apply for George Michael HPC Fellowship by July 2
The George Michael HPC Fellowship honors exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus is on high-performance computing applications, networking, storage, or large-scale data analysis using the most powerful computers that are currently available. ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the SC Conference Series sponsor this fellowship, which includes a $5,000 honorarium; travel and registration for SC12 and SC13; and an invited presentation opportunity at SC13. Applicants must be enrolled in a full-time PhD program at an accredited college or university. They are expected to have completed at least one year of study in their doctoral program. Fellowship recipients will be selected based on overall potential for research excellence; degree to which technical interests align with those of the HPC community; academic progress to-date; presentations and publications; recommendations by faculty advisor and (optionally) others; a plan of study to enhance HPC-related skills; and demonstration of current and future use of HPC resources. All applicants must meet minimum scholarship requirements at their institution. To apply, go to https://submissions.supercomputing.org, log in, and complete the George Michael Application Form. Applications are due July 2, 11:59 p.m. ET. Questions can be directed to [email protected].

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 CHI 2012. The next conferences accepting submissions are: Learn about more competitions on the SRC submissions page.

Computing Community Consortium's 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.

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, IEEE Computer Society Join to Share Distinguished Speakers Programs
IEEE-CS and ACM have joined to share their invited speaker programs, to further the dissemination of technical knowledge of computing fields that greatly benefit both memberships. IEEE-CS chapter volunteers can host a speaker from ACM's Distinguished Speakers Program (DSP), with access to top technology leaders and innovators from nearly every sector of the computing industry, by following the instructions on the DSP site. Make sure you identify yourself as an IEEE Computer Society Chapter.

IEEE-CS provides a popular offering of first-quality speakers serving its professional and student chapters. The Distinguished Visitors Program (DVP) owes its success to the many volunteers and staff members of the Computer Society who generously contribute their time and talent. Organizers of an ACM chapter, conference, or event can host a speaker from IEEE-CS's DVP by following the instructions instructions on the DVP site. Make sure you identify yourself as an ACM chapter or event.
 
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 were chartered April 21 to May 18, 2012:

ACM Student Chapters:
  • Butte College ACM Student Chapter, Oroville, California
  • CWRU ACM Student Chapter, Cleveland, Ohio
  • IUPUI ACM-W Student Chapter, Indianapolis, Indiana
  • JIIT ACM Student Chapter, Noida, India
  • METU-CENG ACM Student Chapter, Ankara, Turkey
  • University of Canberra ACM Student Chapter, Canberra, Australia
  • UPRM-ECE ACM Student Chapter, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico
  • UWW ACM-W Student Chapter, Whitewater, Wisconsin
ACM-W News

Successful Kentucky Celebration Draws Young Women to Computing
The Second Regional Kentucky Celebration of Women in Computing (KYWIC 2012), held February 24 to 25, is now history. There were 125 participants from 17 colleges and universities, two high schools and 10 professional organizations at Kentucky Dam Village State Park. Intended to pair career women in computing with undergraduate and graduate students, the conference included keynote speaker Jennifer Marsman (Microsoft), Maria Ebling (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center), Xiaohui (Helen) Gu (North Carolina State University), Joanne Cohoon (National Center for Women & Information Technology) and Rosario Robinson (Anita Borg Institute). Attendees benefited from poster sessions, lightning talks, panel discussions and networking. Making "geek jewelry" highlighted Friday night along with several Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. The winners of poster sessions each received a scholarship to attend the international 2012 Grace Hopper Celebration in October. Katie Fore (senior Computer Science/Mathematics double major at Murray State University) was the undergraduate winner for her project "Automating Optimal Control Solutions for Models of the Real World." Dippy Aggarwal (University of Cincinnati) won the graduate division for her research project "Leveraging Power Analytics and Linked Data for Enterprise Computing."

"If the emails and thank-you cards coming from the students and professional women at the conference are any indication of our goals being met, then this endeavor was as successful as we could have dreamed it would be!" said conference chair Brenda Wilson. "I am so thankful to all who supported us. We are especially grateful for sponsorships from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Anita Borg Institute, CRA-W/CDC Distinguished Lecture Series, NCWIT, MSU and Raytheon, which helped fund 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

Computers in Entertainment Launches New Website
The new CIE website bridges the gap between scholarly researchers and industry professionals focused on digital media, entertainment, and technology—filmmaking, music, graphic art, gaming, television, as well as the impact of media and technology on society. CIE features both peer-reviewed articles as well as non-refereed content in all aspects of entertainment technology and applications, including articles, interviews, videos, commentaries, product reviews, and industry news. There is also an event calendar and blog. Visit the CIE website to find research partners, discover new possibilities, and share cutting-edge ideas around technology and entertainment.

ACM Journal of Data and Information Quality Seeks New Editor-in-Chief
Nominations are sought for a new Editor-in-Chief for the ACM Journal of Data and Information Quality (JDIQ). The deadline is July 15. Please refer to the nominations page for full instructions.

CACM Reports: How Turing Award Winner Judea Pearl Changed the Game for Artificial Intelligence
As ACM celebrates the centenary of computing pioneer Alan Turing's birth in June, the Communications of the ACM (CACM) June cover story highlights the advances of the most recent ACM Turing Award recipient, Judea Pearl. Science writer Neil Savage probes Pearl's passionate advocacy of the importance of probability and causality and its implications for economics, epidemiology, and disease diagnosis as well as machine learning and natural language processing. In a companion article, technology writer Leah Hoffman captures Pearl's own words as he explains the arc of his scientific discoveries, from developing memory systems based on probability to analyzing causal relationships and creating the calculus of intervention. This accomplishment made possible the ability to compute the consequences of various actions. Also in this issue, Eugene H. Spafford, who chairs the ACM Public Policy Council (USACM), dissects the recent controversy over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion legislation. He notes that USACM provided briefings to Congressional staff and others on how the proposed legislation could damage the deployment of Internet security specifications (i.e., Domain Name System Security Extensions). In accordance with its mission, USACM did not address the other factors involved in real-life policy choices.

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.
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ACM Queue Presents: Realtime Computer Vision with OpenCV
OpenCV (and other related APIs such as Point Cloud Library) have made it easier for application developers to use computer vision. They are well-documented and vibrant open source projects that keep growing, and they are being adapted to new computing technologies. In Realtime Computer Vision with OpenCV, Kari Pulli at Nvidia and his colleagues at itseez show how mobile computer vision technology will soon become as ubiquitous as touch interfaces.

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ACM in the News

"Alan Turing's centennial provides a retrospective on his influence"
SD Times, May 22, 2012
ACM's Turing Centenary Celebration on June 15 and 16 in San Francisco will include individual talks by past ACM A.M. Turing Award winners, as well as panel events on Alan Turing's life and legacy.

"Ren Ng, Future of Photography"
TEDxTalks, May 21, 2012
Before starting Lytro in 2006, Ren Ng had been extensively studying light field science and computational science. His seminal PhD research on light field technology earned the field's top honor, the 2006 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for best thesis in computer science and engineering. Watch the video from the TED conference.

"Russian Whizzes Win Global Collegiate IT Contest"
Agence France-Presse , May 17, 2012
The St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics has won this year's ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), besting 111 other teams from around the world by solving nine of 12 problems in five hours.

"Picking the Brains of Strangers Improves Efforts to Make Sense of Online Information"
Carnegie Mellon University, May 7, 2012
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research recently presented their findings on distributed sensemaking at ACM's CHI 2012 conference on Computer-Human Interaction.

"Shut Off E-Mail to Ease Work Stress"
Scientific American, May 7, 2012
A new study finds that closing your in-box can boost concentration and ease stress. The research was presented at ACM's CHI 2012 conference.

"ACM CHI: More Search Could Be Crowdsourced"
PC World, May 7, 2012
Web search engines use computer-run page ranking algorithms to generate results for user submitted queries. However, this range of answers could be radically expanded through some data mining techniques and crowdsourced editing, according to MIT researcher Michael Bernstein, who presented the group's work at ACM's CHI 2012 conference.

"Richard Karp, Leader of ICSI Algorithms Group, Named Founding Director of Simons Foundation's New Institute for Theory of Computing"
TMCnet, May 2, 2012
Karp will lead the institute with Alistair Sinclair and Christos Papadimitriou. He has performed foundational work in computational complexity and, as noted in ACM's 1985 Turing Award citation, introduced the "now standard methodology for proving problems to be computationally difficult."

"Implanted User Interface Gives Patients New Options"
Information Week, May 2, 2012
Researchers who are testing implanted user interfaces say the appliances will enable people who have implanted medical devices such as pacemakers to recharge and reprogram them without the use of wireless transmissions, according to a paper presented at ACM's CHI 2012 conference.

"Thwarting the Cleverest Attackers: Even Most Secure-Seeming Computer Is Shockingly Vulnerable to Attack"
Science Daily, May 1, 2012
At ACM's Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) in May, ACM Gracy Murray Hopper Award winner and Athena Lecturer Shafi Goldwasser and colleagues will presented paper demonstrating how the technique she developed with former student Guy Rothblum can be adapted to protect information processed on web servers.

"Bridging the Gender Gap: Why More Women Aren't Computer Scientists, Engineers"
PBS NewsHour, April 26, 2012
Former ACM President Maria Klawe is seeking to close the gender gap in the hard sciences, which she attributes to young women's perception of such fields as uninteresting, beyond their capabilities, and being conducive to unappealing people. Watch the interview with Judy Woodruff.
 

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