ACM MemberNet - September 27, 2012

Welcome to the September 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 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 Announces Major Update to Computing Classification System
ACM has completed a major update of its Computing Classification System (CCS), which has served as the de facto standard for classifying the computing field since 1964. Professor Zvi Kedem of New York University directed the 2012 CCS Update project. He led a group of 120 computing specialists (a third of them ACM Fellows) working in collaboration with ACM staff and with Semedica, a division of Silverchair specializing in ontology development. The last major update of the CCS was in 1998. The CCS is used to classify content, create author expertise profiles, identify strong research areas in Institutional Profiles, and support search and retrieval for ACM's Digital Library, containing more than 250,000 full-text articles published by ACM, and the Guide to Computing Literature, a database of more than 2 million bibliographic citations and abstracts of works published across the computer science field.
Read more about the ACM 2012 Computing Classification System.

ACM Special Interest Groups Extend Officers' Terms
Officers of permanent SIGs are elected by plurality vote of the SIG members beginning July 1. At the end of the term, the SIG Governing Board may exercise an option at the request of the SIG Officers to extend their term for a set number of years as set forth in the SIG's bylaws. In accordance with this policy, the SIG Governing Board voted to approve the request to extend the terms of office for the following SIGs: SIGARCH, SIGecom, SIGMETRICS, SIGOPS, and SIGWEB.

Elections will be held for any of these SIGs if a petition is brought forward by one percent (1%) of the members of the SIG. A petition to initiate an election must be received at ACM Headquarters:
Patricia Ryan, Office of Policy and Administration, 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701, New York, NY 10121 by November 1. Questions about the petition process should be directed to Pat Ryan, ACM Chief Operating Officer, at [email protected].

Awards

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:
Awards with November 30 nomination deadlines:
  • A.M. Turing Award
  • ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences
  • ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award
  • Software System Award
  • Grace Murray Hopper Award
  • Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award
  • Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics
  • Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award
  • Distinguished Service Award
  • Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award
Other Award deadlines:
  • Doctoral Dissertation Award: October 31
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 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 December 3.

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

ACM-BCB 2012, October 7 to 12, Orlando Florida
The ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Biomedicine (BCB 2012) is the main flagship conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Bioinformatics. ACM BCB 2012 is in its third year, building upon the success of ACM BCB 2010 in Niagara Falls and ACM BCB 2011 in Chicago. The conference is a premier forum for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research encompassing disciplines of computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics, and biomedicine. Papers will cover Genomics and Evolution; Protein and RNA Structure, Protein Function, and Proteomics; Computational Systems Biology; Next Generation Sequencing Data; Medical Informatics and Translational Bioinformatics; Cross-Cutting Computational Methods; Bioinformatics Infrastructure; Computational Epidemiology; Image Analysis; Knowledge Representation and Inference; Integration of Biomedical Data; Databases, Knowledgebases; Ontologies; Text Mining and Natural Language Processing; and more. Four workshops on Immunoinformatics and Computational Immunology; Biological Network Analysis and Applications in Translational and Personalized Medicine; Parallel and Cloud-based Bioinformatics and Biomedicine; and Robustness and Stability of Biological Systems and Computational Solutions. "An Introduction to Evolutionary Computation for Bioinformatics" and "A Survey of Computational Approaches to Reconstruct, Partition, and Query Biological Networks" are the two scheduled tutorials. The program also includes invited talks by Ying Xu (University of Georgia), on "Genomic Location Is Information: Towards Understanding the Organizational Principles of Bacterial Genomes"; Martha L. Bulyk (Harvard University), on "Transcription Factors and DNA Regulatory Elements" and Pierre Baldi (University of California, Irvine), on "Machine Learning Approaches in Proteomics."

SIGITE & RIIT 2012, October 11 to 13, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
The dual conference format of the 13th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education and the 1st Annual Research in IT Conference (SIGITE/RIIT 2012) provides a forum for sharing and developing ideas relating to Information Technology research, education, applications, IT-industry-academia relationships and our roles as professionals, educators, and advocates for the effective use of Information Technology. This year's event includes a new IT Research conference; our aim 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 at no additional charge. Both conferences are sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Technology Education (SIGITE).

SoCC 2012, October 14 to 17, San Jose, California
The ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC 2012) is the third in a new series of symposia that brings together researchers, developers, users, and practitioners interested in cloud computing. For the first time, this event is being held independently, recognizing the growing research fertility and societal/commercial importance of cloud computing. (SoCC was previously held in conjunction with the SIGMOD and SOSP). Co-sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Groups on Management of Data (SIGMOD) and on Operating Systems (SIGOPS), the symposium is will include a keynote address, two full days of single-track technical talks, and a day of optional tutorials. Keynote speaker Scott Shenker of the University of California, Berkeley will speak on Software-Defined Networking: Overview and Implications," and is considered a leader in this area. There will also be opportunities to mingle with world-class leaders in cloud computing in a more informal setting, and a banquet at the Tech Museum will put attendees in touch with exhibits celebrating the innovations of Silicon Valley and beyond.

SIGUCCS 2012, October 14 to 19, Memphis, Tennessee
The SIGUCCS 2012 conference, sponsored by ACM's Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services, focuses on the issues surrounding the support, delivery, and management of college and university IT services. The format provides members and others in the field of college and university IT support a wide variety of learning and professional development opportunities. The conference is made up of two distinct components: the Management Symposium and the User Support Conference. Both segments give IT professionals extended time to acquire knowledge and to network with other IT professionals at all levels. Scheduled speakers will address Collaborating for Change, The Future of Social Media in Education, and Getting Into the Mind of the Customer, and how IT professionals can use this idea to develop and deliver more useful applications and services to their end-user communities.

CCS 2012, October 16 to 18, Raleigh, North Carolina
The ACM CCS 2012 Conference on Computer and Communications Security is a leading international forum for information security researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences. More than 80 technical papers will address security issues ranging from Open Source Releases to Minimizing Private Data Disclosures in the Smart Grid. Related co-located workshops include Building Analysis Datasets and Gathering Experience Returns for Security; Scalable Trusted Computing; Privacy in the Electronic Society; Artificial Intelligence and Security; Cloud Computing Security; and Security and Privacy in Smartphones and Mobile Devices. Virgil Gligor, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, is a scheduled keynote speaker.

SPLASH 2012, October 19 to 26, Tucson, Arizona
SPLASH, the conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (formerly known as OOPSLA) embraces all aspects of software construction and delivery. This is the premier conference at the intersection of programming languages, programming, and software engineering, providing a forum for software innovation while broadening the scope of the conference into new topics beyond objects and new forms of contributions. Co-located events are Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP) and the Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS). Scheduled keynote speakers are Barbara Simons, former ACM president and e-voting expert; Jim Coplien, an authority, author, and trainer in software design and organizational improvements; K. Rustan M. Leino, a Principal Researcher in the Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group at Microsoft Research; and Rob Pike, a Distinguished Engineer at Google.

ANCS 2012, October 16 to 18, Raleigh, North Carolina
The ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems (ANCS) is a systems-oriented research conference, presenting original work that explores the relationship between the architecture of modern computer networks and the architecture of the individual hardware and software elements from which these networks are built. This year's conference emphasizes in its paper selection research on computer and network systems that provide the foundations of emerging network technologies and the future Internet. Keynote presentations by Gordon Brebner (Distinguished Engineer, Xilinx, Inc.) and Teemu Koponen (Sr. Staff Engineer, VMware Inc.) will address networking aspects of software.

ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2012, November 6 to 9, Redondo Beach, California
The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS) is the 20th event in a series of symposia and workshops that began in 1993 with the aim of bringing together researchers, developers, users, and practitioners in relation to novel systems based on geo-spatial data and knowledge, and fostering interdisciplinary discussions and research in all aspects of geographic information systems. The conference provides a forum for original research contributions covering all conceptual, design, and implementation aspects of GIS ranging from applications, user interfaces, and visualization to data storage and query processing and indexing. The conference is the premier annual event of the ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information (ACM SIGSPATIAL). The early registration deadline is September 30.

SC12, November 10 to 16, Salt Lake City, Utah
SC12, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, gathers the best and brightest minds in supercomputing, with technical papers, tutorials, workshops, exhibits, posters and speakers. World-renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku will deliver the keynote. The technical program will explore all aspects of high performance computing, from parallelism to exascale.

HILT 2012, December 2 to 6, Boston
HILT, the conference on High Integrity Language Technology sponsored by SIGAda, will provide a forum for experts from academia/research, industry, and government to present the latest findings in designing, implementing, and using language technology for high integrity software. Technical papers, experience reports (including experience in teaching), and tutorial proposals will cover a broad range of relevant topics. Scheduled keynote speakers include Barbara Liskov, the winner of the 2008 ACM A.M. Turing Award and the first woman in the US to receive a Ph.D. in computer science. Other keynote presentations from leading experts in language technology and high-integrity systems: Kathleen Fisher, an ACM Fellow and DARPA Project Manager for High-Assurance Cyber Systems; Nancy Leveson, professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and professor of engineering systems at MIT, and an ACM Allen Newell Award recipient; Greg Morrisett, the Allen B. Cutting professor of computer science at Harvard, also on the editorial board of Journal of the ACM; and Guy Steele, a software architect at Oracle and an ACM Fellow and Grace Murray Hopper Award recipient.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2012, November 28 to December 1, Singapore
The SIGGRAPH Asia conference features a myriad of stellar and innovative contributions from artists, designers, animators, researchers, and developers from industry and academia. As with the US SIGGRAPH conference, the events are geared to the computer graphics community and those in related fields, and include exhibits, an Art Gallery, the Computer Animation Festival, courses, posters, an Emerging Technologies track, an apps symposium, and technical papers and briefs. Featured speakers will include Karlheinz Brandenburg, the "father of MP3," and Richard Chuang, co-founder of PDI/DreamWorks.
 
Member Programs

Become an Ambassador for ACM—You Could Be a Grand Prize Winner!
The Ambassadors for ACM program rewards ACM members like you for encouraging new members to join. Your first-hand experience with ACM's valuable career development and continuous learning programs makes you a perfect envoy to share your ACM experiences with prospective members. Please consider becoming an Ambassador for ACM. The top ACM Ambassador for August was Anant Bhaskar Garg. The 2012—2013 Ambassadors for ACM program is underway, with opportunities for you to earn new prizes, rewards and bonus gifts with each referral.

Submit the ACM Referral Form, and your referrals can join ACM at a special discount rate. Our members are our greatest asset. Your support of ACM is critical to our continuing efforts to advance computing as a science and a profession.

ACM Group Level Term Life Insurance Plan
The ACM Group Term Life Insurance Plan administered by Marsh U.S. Consumer, a service of Seabury & Smith, Inc., is an important member benefit available to ACM members and their families at affordable, group-negotiated rates. ACM members and their spouses/domestic partners are eligible to apply for up to $500,000 in benefit amounts. (Children's coverage is available up to $5,000.) This plan also offers an Accelerated Life Benefit, which pays up to 60% of the benefit amount before death if the insured is diagnosed as terminally ill. Other plan features include a 30-day review period and the option for members to choose their own beneficiary. Learn more about ACM Group Level Term Life Insurance Plan today, or call 1-800-503-9230.

Live Chat Feature Available to Members
ACM's 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.

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

ACM Learning Webinar on Recommender Systems Now Available on Demand
ACM's Learning Webinar, "Recommender Systems: The Power of Personalization," is now available on demand (same link as registration: http://learning.acm.org/webinar/recommender). The webinar provides an introduction to recommender systems, describing the different types of recommendation technologies available and how they are used in different applications today. The webinar was presented on September 20 by Joseph A. Konstan, a computer science professor at the University of Minnesota who has also been active in ACM and SIGCHI, and moderated by Gary M. Olson, professor of information and computer sciences at the University of California, Irvine. And check out Joe Konstan's answers to the questions he didn't get to during the live Q&A session.

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, IEEE-CS Release Report on Masters Degree Programs in Europe and the US
The Report on Master's Programs in Europe and the United States is now available for review. It was put together by the joint ACM and IEEE-CS committee consisting of Lillian N. Cassel, Michael Casperson, Gordon Davies, Arnold Pears, Art Pyster, and Heikki Topi. The document provides a framework for describing and comparing Masters programs in computing in Europe and the United States. The eventual goal is to make it possible to present each program's characteristic features, so that students, faculty, and employers will understand what a particular program provides. The framework has been presented at SIGCSE and ITiCSE conferences on several occasions, as well as an International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) workshop, and incorporates community feedback.

Ensemble Site for Computing Educators
Ensemble is a new collaborative portal for computing educators where you can share and upload files, resources, and other valuable information, join groups and communities, and participate in discussion on important education news and research. An NSF NSDL (National STEM Education Distributed Learning) Pathways project, Ensemble provides single access to a broad range of existing educational resources for computing while preserving the collections and their associated curation processes. The site strongly encourages use, reuse, review and evaluation of educational materials at multiple levels of granularity and seeks to support the full range of computing education communities, including computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, information science, information systems and information technology as well as other areas often called "computing + X" or "X informatics." Users can tag, rate, and comment on one another's contributions and participation. Notably, Ensemble offers a set of "ready-for-prime-time" technology resources as part of TECH, a project of the ACM Education Council.
 
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 winners presented at PACT. The next conferences accepting submissions are:
  • SIGCSE 2013, March 6-9, 2013, deadline September 30, 2012
  • AOSD 2013, March 24-29, 2013, deadline October 21, 2012
  • SAC 2013, March 18-22, 2013, deadline October 31, 2012
  • ICSE 2013, May 18-26, 2013, deadline December 17, 2012
  • CHI 2013, April 27-May 2, deadline January 5, 2013
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 (SIG) conferences (SIGACCESS, SIGACT, SIGARCH, SIGCOMM, SIGCHI, SIGCSE, SIGDA, SIGECOM, SIGEVO, SIGGRAPH, SIGIR, SIGITE, SIGMM, SIGMOBILE, SIGOPS, SIGPLAN, and SIGSOFT), 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.

Additional scholarship awards for women students to attend research conferences have recently been made possible by Microsoft Research. Microsoft has given ACM-W $20,000 to support scholarships for women of European citizenship. Under the agreement with Microsoft, these awards will cover conference registration fees and provide an additional $600 if the conference is intracontinental, or $1200 if it is involves intercontinental travel. The student does not have to be attending a European school in order to be eligible, and the amount of the award is based on where she attends school relative to where the conference is. We are delighted to have this additional support for the scholarships, in addition to the funds we already have from Wipro Ltd. In addition, 16 SIGs have thus far signed on to support the scholarships by providing complimentary conference registration to scholarship recipients.

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 ACM Distinguished Speaker: Yale Patt
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 Yale Patt. Yale has consulted extensively in the computer industry for the past 40 years, helping major manufacturers design high peformance microprocessors and systems. He is vitally concerned with the way we introduce computing to undergraduate computer science and engineering majors. His research results have been adopted extensively in current high performance microprocessors. Yale earned a BS (Northeastern), MS and PhD (Stanford) degrees in electrical engineering. He is a Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM. He was named Outstanding ACM Lecturer in 1998-1999, and in 2000-2001, and received the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award in 2000, the ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award (the highest honor in the field of Computer Architecture) in 1996, and many other distinctions for excellence in teaching. He co-wrote the textbook, Introduction to Computing Systems: from Bits and Gates to C and Beyond with his former PhD student, Sanjay Patel of the University of Illinois.
For more information on Yale, please visit his DSP speaker information page.
Yale Patt'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

Notice to Chapters: Please Complete Your Annual Reports
Chapter Leaders: If you have not yet submitted your annual report for the fiscal year July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012, please do so as soon as possible. To access your chapter's administrative interface, enter your username and password here: https://campus.acm.org/chapter_admin. If you have forgotten your username or password, please follow this link: https://campus.acm.org/public/account/signin.cfm?r=1. In addition, you may notice the Annual Report looks a bit different from years past. ACM has been working hard to serve our chapters in the best way possible, and this new release provides a user-friendly interface which allows full editing of your information until submission. SIGGRAPH Chapters will find additional questions at the end of their report that must be completed as well. Any questions, please contact [email protected].

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 August 25, 2012 to September 21, 2012:

ACM Student Chapters:
  • Columbus State University ACM Student Chapter, Columbus, Georgia
  • NIT Calicut ACM Student Chapter, Calicut, India
  • PSU-Harrisburg ACM Student Chapter, Middletown, Pennsylvania
  • RIT ACM SIGGRAPH Student Chapter, Rochester, New York
  • Schreiner University ACM Student Chapter, Kerrville, Texas
  • UAT ACM Student Chapter, Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico
  • Singapore University of Technology and Design ACM Student Chapter, Singapore
  • UTEP ACM-W Student Chapter, El Paso, Texas
  • Vardhaman College of Engineering ACM Student Chapter, Hyderabad, India
  • VCET ACM Student Chapter, Madurai, India
ACM-W News

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 Internet Technology Seeks New Editor-in-Chief
Nominations are sought for a new Editor-in-Chief for ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT). The deadline is November 1. Please refer to the nominations page for full instructions.

ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing Seeks New Editor-in-Chief
Nominations are sought for a new Editor-in-Chief for ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing (TALIP). The deadline is November 30. Please refer to the nominations page for full instructions.

Information Systems Category Editor Needed for Computing Reviews
Computing Reviews, the post-publication review and comment journal of ACM, is seeking a volunteer interested in serving as a category editor in the information systems area. Please see the Information Systems Category Editor search page for more information.

CACM Reports: Solving Global Challenges with Social Computation
As computational problem solving continues to intersect with economics and social science disciplines, Michael Kearns of the University of Pennsylvania surveys experiments that explore the ability of human subjects to solve challenging tasks in social networks. The experiments involved dozens of subjects in a laboratory of networked workstations, who are given financial incentives to resolve problems as diverse as graph coloring, networked trading, and biased voting. In the October cover story of Communications of the ACM (CACM), he reports that, despite the emphasis on collective problem-solving, it is individual human decision-making, strategies, and personalities that influence outcomes. Also in this issue, ACM President Vint Cerf acknowledges the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of computer software. Citing the meaning of "science" in computer science, he makes the case that computer scientists need to develop better tools and deeper understanding of the systems they invent and a greater ability to make predictions about the behavior of these systems. Cerf identifies ACM membership as a mark of recognition of that responsibility, and encourages others in the profession to join the quest for the science in the discipline.

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 ACM press release.

Ubiquity Presents: A Symposium on Evolutionary Computation and the Processes of Life
In the latest Ubiquity symposium co-led by Mark Burgin (UCLA) and Eugene Eberbach (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), 14 articles explore the essence and characteristic properties of evolutionary computation in the context of life and computation.

ACM Inroads Reports: The Value Proposition of Distance Education in Computing Programs
In the wake of recent news announcements that some prestigious universities are adopting online offerings in the computing field, the September issue of ACM Inroads examines the value proposition posed by distance education in this growing field. Writers Marian Petre of Open University (UK) and Mary Shaw of Carnegie Mellon University analyze the elements that contribute value to traditional undergraduate computer science education. They conclude that while distance education is breaking the bonds of synchronization of class schedules and geography that govern campus-based institutions, high-quality education still requires substantial investment in personalization, feedback, and networking.

Published quarterly by ACM with support from the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), ACM Inroads offers readers a wide array of education-related articles on computing and its expanding role in how we live and work in the digital world. The ACM Inroads digital edition was introduced in June.
Read the ACM press release.

eLearn Magazine Reports: MOOCs R Us
While MOOCs (massively open online courses) have much to offer to higher education, Dan W. Butin argues in MOOCs R Us that they can only take us so far. Ultimately, MOOCs provide an apprenticeship into Wikipedia; faculty—if they do their jobs right—provide an apprenticeship into democracy.

ACM Queue Presents: Disks from the Perspective of a File System
In an article for ACM Queue, Marshall Kirk McKusick claims that "disks lie. And the controllers that run them are partners in crime." He explains why that is so by exploring the past 50 years of disk technology, and concludes with: "File systems need to be aware of the disk technology on which they are running to ensure that they can reliably deliver the semantics that they have promised. Users need to be aware of the constraints that different disk technology places on file systems and select a technology that will not result in poor performance for the type of file system workload they will be using."

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

"Zeichick's Take: Reimagining the taxonomy of computing"
SD Times, September 24, 2012
Commenting on ACM's new 2012 Computing Classification System, SD Times editorial director and former software developer Alan Zeichick says, "Think of the CCS taxonomy as a giant table of contents or index for our industry."

"Education Site Expands Slate of Universities and Courses"
New York Times, September 19, 2012
Daphne Koller, the first ACM-Infosys Foundation Award recipient, is a founder of Coursera, which recently increased its number of university partners to 33 and now provides more than 200 free massive open online courses (MOOCs).

"App lets you monitor lung health using only a smartphone"
EurekAlert, September 18, 2012
A new tool from researchers at the University of Washington, UW Medicine and Seattle Children's Hospital lets people monitor their lung function at home or on the go simply by blowing into their smartphones. A paper presented at ACM's International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing showed results that came within 5% of commercial devices, meaning it already meets the medical community's standards for accuracy.

"Online Mentors to Guide Women into the Sciences"
New York Times, September 16, 2012
Harvey Mudd College president and former ACM president Maria Klawe recently launched the Women in Technology Sharing Online (WitsOn) project, which organizes hundreds of prominent women working in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries to become online mentors for college students.

"Computer program can identify rough sketches"
Brown University, September 12, 2012
Brown University researchers have developed software that can identify simple sketches in real time, which they note is the first program that enables semantic understanding of abstract sketches. The research was presented at the recent ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 conference.

"Tech's New Wave, Driven by Data"
New York Times, September 9, 2012
Flash memory is finding increasing use in big computers, retaining a large database in memory rather than storing data on disk drives. "All parts of the technology pipeline are gearing up at the same time, and that's how you get this explosion of new applications and uses," says Cornell University professor and ACM-Infosys Foundation Award 2008 recipient Jon Kleinberg.

"'Acceleration Noise' Adds Realism to Animated Collisions"
Cornell Chronicle, August 20, 2012
A paper describing new sound synthesis software to produce more realistic sounds for computer-generated events was presented at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 conference.
 

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