ACM MemberNet - February 21, 2013

Welcome to the February 2013 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 News 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 President Vint Cerf Appointed to NSF Governing Board by White House
President Barack Obama has named Vint Cerf to the National Science Board (NSB), which oversees the National Science Foundation. Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google Inc., joins a distinguished group of leaders from industry and universities who represent a variety of science and engineering disciplines and geographic areas. The NSB establishes the policies of NSF within the framework of applicable national policies set forth by the President and the Congress. It also serves as an independent body of advisors to both the President and the Congress on policy and education matters related to science and engineering. The appointment, for a six-year term, offers opportunities to identify issues that are critical to NSF's future, approves NSF's strategic budget directions and the annual budget submission to the Office of Management and Budget, and approves new major programs and awards.

2013 SIG Election Candidate Slate Announced
In accordance with ACM Bylaw 6, the following SIGs will hold elections in 2013: SIGAda, SIGAPP, SIGART, SIGBED, SIGCOMM, SIGCSE, SIGDOC, SIGEVO, ACM SIGGRAPH, SIGHPC, SIGIR, SIGKDD, SIGMIS, SIGMOBILE, SIGMOD, SIGMULTIMEDIA, SIGSAC and SIGSAM.

ACM Policy and Procedures require that those SIGs holding elections notify their membership of candidates for elected offices. To see the slate of candidates, please visit the 2013 ACM SIG Election site. In accordance with the SIG Bylaws, additional candidates may be placed on the ballot by petition. All candidates must be Professional Members of ACM, as well as members of the SIG. Anyone interested in petitioning must inform ACM Headquarters (Pat Ryan, ACM, 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701, NY, NY 10121; [email protected]) and the SIG Viability Advisor (Barbara Boucher Owens, [email protected]) of their intent to petition by March 15.

ACM Council Endorses New Publishing Policy
ACM Publications Board Co-chairs Ronald F. Boisvert and Jack W. Davidson explain ACM's new publishing polices in the February issue of Communications of the ACM. They describe the changes that increase free access paths to ACM's content and provide more author choices. They also address the question of how a sustainable economic model for publication can be established that serves the interests of both authors and the reading public, and emphasize the critical role that nonprofit professional societies must play in building this new model.
Read their editorial in CACM.

Jim Horning, Past ACM Awards Committee Co-Chair, Dies
James J. ("Jim") Horning, a leading figure in the evolution of computer science as a discipline and a profession, was instrumental in solidifying the role of ACM's awards program in recognizing excellence in computing. Horning, co-chair of the ACM Awards Committee from 2002 to 2012 along with Calvin C. (Kelly) Gotlieb, died in Palo Alto, California, on January 18. A prolific figure among his colleagues in the computing field, Horning described himself as being "fascinated…by the use and potential of computers" since 1959, when he wrote his first computer program. He captured his observations and memories in several blogs. A self-described computer scientist, he also enjoyed photography, science fiction, genealogy, fuchsias, and West Highland white terriers.
Read more about Jim Horning on ACM's home page.

Awards

Eckert-Mauchly Award Nominations Due March 30
The ACM/IEEE-CS Eckert-Mauchly Award honors recipients with a certificate and $5,000 given jointly by the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding contributions to the field of computer and digital systems architecture, where the field of computer architecture is considered to encompass the combined hardware-software design and analysis of computing and digital systems. Nominations are due March 30.

Member Recognition

Call for ACM Senior Member Nominations
The Senior Member advanced grade of membership recognizes ACM members with at least 10 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous ACM Professional membership who have demonstrated performance and accomplishment that set them apart from their peers. Nominations are accepted on a quarterly basis. The deadline for nominations is March 1.

SIG News

ACM Special Interest Group and Conference Travel Grants
ACM's 36 Special Interest Groups offer numerous travel grants through their programs and sponsored events. Grant funds help students and attendees defray travel costs to an ACM event, for which SIG leadership and conference organizers establish independent guidelines and handle the selection process. During calendar year 2012, approximately 1,000 grants funded through 80+ programs were given to recipients in 41 countries. The following is a broad sampling of travel grant programs offered by ACM SIGs and conferences (where 2013 information is not yet available, the 2012 event is listed):

SIG Travel Grants Conference Travel Grants ACM SIG Awards Recognize Achievements in Diverse Fields
ACM's Special Interest Groups (SIGs) regularly cite outstanding individuals for their contributions in more than 35 distinct technological fields. Some awards presented (or to be presented) at recent conferences:
Conferences and Events

SIGCSE 2013, March 6 to 9, Denver, Colorado
The SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education gathers colleagues from around the world to address problems common among educators working to develop, implement and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses. The symposium provides a forum for sharing new ideas for syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy, at all levels of instruction. The theme, "The Changing Face of Computing," focuses on how CS education must adjust to meet changing needs. A special group opening keynote session devoted to this theme will include Ed Lazowska (Univ. of Washington and USACM); Bobby Schnabel (Indiana Univ. and ACM Education Policy Committee); Mary Lou Soffa (Univ. of Virginia and ACM Member-at-Large); Lucy Sanders (NCWIT); Jan Cuny (NSF and CISE); Patty Lopez (Intel); and Juan Gilbert (Clemson Univ. and USACM). Other speakers include Henry Walker (Grinnell College), Michael Kölling (Univ. of Kent) and Jane Margolis (UCLA). Special events include a movie on Alan Turing followed by a Q&A session with the film's executive producer, and a keynote session on massively open online courses (MOOCs)led by John Etchemendy of Stanford University.

IUI 2013, March 19 to 22, Santa Monica, California
The International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces is the 18th annual meeting of the intelligent interfaces community and serves as the principal international forum for reporting outstanding research and development on intelligent user interfaces. The conference draws researchers from academia, nonprofit organizations, and industry, as well as practitioners. Exciting talks will feature Luis von Ahn (Carnegie Mellon University and Founder of Duolingo) speaking on "Duolingo: Learn a Language for Free while Helping to Translate the Web"; and Monica Lam (Stanford University) on "How Mobile Disrupts Social As We Know It." Tutorials will include Human Computation: A Broad Perspective, and Knowledge Acquisition from the Web & Social Media. Workshops on Interactive Machine Learning, Interacting with Smart Objects, Location Awareness for Mixed and Dual Reality, and Intelligent User Interfaces for Developing Regions will also engage participants.

CHI 2013, April 27 to May 2, Paris, France
The premier international conference on human-computer interaction, the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems this year takes as its theme "Changing Perspectives," offering new visions of people interacting with technology. Multidisciplinary and multicultural in scope, CHI brings together students and experts from over 60 countries, representing different cultures and application areas, whose diverse perspectives influence each other. CHI aims to serve serve communities in design, management, engineering, user experience, arts, sustainability, children, games and entertainment, health, and community development and sustainability. This year's CHI will take place in collaboration with ECRC.

ECRC: First ACM European Computing Research Congress, May 2 to 4, Paris, France
ACM Europe is launching its first global multi-conference event, ECRC. It will be held in conjunction with the CHI 2013 Conference on Computer-Human Interaction at the Palais des Congrès, and will include these conferences: In addition, there will be a number of plenary sessions for all attendees. ACM president Vint Cerf will deliver the opening keynote, and INRIA CEO Michel Cosnard will lead a panel on the future of computing research that includes leaders from industry, academia and government.

CFP 2013, June 25 to 26, Washington, DC
The Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference draws advocates, academics, technologists, policymakers, and others to discuss and debate the issues impacting technology, freedom, and privacy in the digital world. Proposals for potential speakers, panelists, and debate topics in these three areas are now being accepted. The theme of the conference is "Our Computers, Our Freedom: Can You Trust Anyone in the Digital Age?" Due to the later date of this conference, the deadline for submissions is now March 1. The venue for CFP will be the Newseum, adding to the the fun and intellectual excitement CFP always generates.
 
Public Policy

USACM Chair Comments on Cybersecurity Executive Order
Earlier this month, USACM Chair Eugene Spafford issued a statement in response to President Barack Obama's Executive Order to strengthen cyber defenses and develop standards to protect national security, as cited in the 2013 State of the Union Address. In it, Spafford outlined some suggestions for implementing the executive order, specifically: targeted cybersecurity standards; different risk management responses; protections for disclosed information; accommodating technological changes; and involving USACM in the consultative process. Visit USACM's Privacy and Security page for more background on this statement.
 
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 November was Vishal Kumar; for December it was Taiwo Oladipupo Ayodele; and for January it was Rogerio Tavares Gasi. The 2012–2013 Ambassadors for ACM program offers 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.

MentorNet Matches ACM Students, Professionals for One-on-One Mentoring
ACM partners with MentorNet to promote e-mentoring relationships between students (protégés) and professionals (mentors). MentorNet, founded in 1997, now boasts 30,000 mentor/protégé relationships that encourage and inspire students considering careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Professionals also benefit from the program, practicing skills and gaining insights into their own careers. Above all, they gain satisfaction from knowing that they're helping to diversify the global workforce in these fields. ACM members can participate in this program as protégés if they are undergraduates, graduates, post-doctoral students, or untenured faculty. ACM Professional Members with a college degree and at least two years of professional work experience in engineering, science, technology, mathematics, medicine or related disciplines can qualify as mentors. To learn more, visit MentorNet's newly redesigned site and the introductory ACM MentorNet page. Also check out the short videos for protégés and mentors that will walk you through the steps of creating a profile and connecting with others in the MentorNet community.

Valuable Offers and Discounts for ACM Members
ACM members: save on auto, home and renters insurance through Liberty Mutual. In 2012, members saved an average of $343.90 on auto insurance!* For more information, visit the Liberty Mutual ACM Members' page or call 1-800-524-9400. Be sure to identify yourself as a member of ACM, group #8559.

*Average figure based on a February 2012 sample of auto policyholder savings when comparing their former premium with those of Liberty Mutual's auto and home insurance program. Individual premiums and savings will vary.

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

Major Update to ACM Online Book/Video Collection
On February 27, you will find dozens of new titles in the ACM Learning Center. This "book swap" refreshes our library based on member suggestions, updates to popular editions as well as coverage of trending skills and technologies. All members will have access to hot Books 24x7 titles such as Android Application Development for Java Programmers, Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 in C#, Beginning CouchDB, iOS 6 Recipes, Professional ASP.NET MVC 4, Programming Massively Parallel Processors, Pro jQuery, The Art of R Programming, The Definitive Guide to HTML5, and Pro C# 5.0 and the .NET 4.5 Framework.

Professional members will additionally have access to new books and videos from Safari, including the popular Big Nerd Ranch Guide series (More Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and Objective-C Programming), Learning Whitehat Hacking and Penetration Testing, MongoDB: The Definitive Guide, Programming in Scala, Programming Collective Intelligence, Python for Data Analysis R in a Nutshell, Strata Conference Santa Clara 2012: Complete Video Compilation, and Xcode 4 Unleashed.

Topics gaining new or increased coverage include agile programming and lean project management, Android and iOS programming, APN .NET MVC 4, business analysis and data mining, cloud computing and virtualization, cyber forensics and information security, game development, Hadoop, HTML5/CSS3, Java and JavaScript, Linux, Microsoft SQL Server 2012, open source databases, R and Scala programming, and Windows 8. Also added are study guides aligned with certifications in CEH Ethical Hacker, Cisco (CCNA, CWNA), CISSP, CompTIA, ITIL, Microsoft's MCTS, Oracle's OCA, PMP, RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux, and VMware's VCP. There is also updated coverage of established technologies such as Fortran and LaTeX. Check out the Safari and Books 24x7 book swap pages on the ACM Learning Center website for the complete list of incoming books and videos. Please finish any books you have open that are on the list of books to be removed, by February 26.

Boost Your Skill Set with New Courses from Skillsoft
Have you taken advantage of ACM's online courses, complimentary for all members? With a variety of learning assets, including online courses and project simulations, the new Skillsoft course catalog offers broad coverage of the latest industry standards, such as HTML 5, Java SE, and Microsoft .NET 4, and SharePoint 2010. Certification tracks aligned with CAPM and PMP, Cisco's CCNA and CCNT, CISSP, CompTIA (A+, Linux +, and Security+), ITIL, LPI (Linux), Microsoft (MCITP, MCSA, MCTS), and Oracle (databases and Java) help prepare you for vendor examinations. Many feature complimentary online "mentoring" from certified subject area experts. Courses are also downloadable to an offline player for your convenience. Check out the full Skillsoft course catalog and leave your course suggestions in the Learning Center Suggestion Box.
 
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

New ACM White Paper Looks at Challenges and Opportunities of Online Learning, MOOCs
The ACM Education Board and Council have just published a white paper addressing the growing popularity of online education, specifically Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). "Online Learning in Computing" grew out of a panel on online learning hosted by the ACM Education Council in June 2012, with several respected educators and researchers sharing their experiences with and opinions on teaching and learning online: Woodie Flowers of MIT, Peter Norvig of Google, John Mitchell of Stanford University, David Patterson of Berkeley (former president of ACM), and Candice Thille of Carnegie Mellon University. This white paper was put together in consultation and with the participation of members of the Education Council and its various representatives, including the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA).

Rather than taking a stance on the merits of online education, the paper seeks to outline the challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies and current educational experiments, and provide a platform to encourage discussion and debate. Potential opportunities for online education as they relate to Education Council priorities are discussed, particularly in the context of the CS2013 curriculum guidelines and the K-12 and Indian education initiatives.

Participate in ACM-NDC Study of Non-Doctoral Programs, Win a $2,500 Grant
The first-ever ACM-sponsored national survey of non-Ph.D.-granting four-year institutions in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Information Technology, and Software Engineering is now underway. Adapted from annual Taulbee Survey of Ph.D.-granting institutions conducted by the Computing Research Association (CRA) and SIGCSE-sponsored TauRUs surveys, ACM-NDC will generate timely data on enrollment, degree production, student body composition, and faculty salaries/demographics. Participating programs will not only be represented in this important view of the non-doctoral landscape in computing, but also be entered to win one of five unrestricted $2,500 grants for their department's discretionary fund. If you are a not-for-profit, US-based academic institution offering bachelor and/or master-level degrees in CE, CS, IS, IT or SE (but not Ph.D.s/doctoral degrees in any computing area), you should take part in our survey. Unique logins have already been mailed to a list of identified departments. If your program/department has not received a unique login URL, please email [email protected] with "ACM-NDC Study" in the subject line and include your name, email, institution, department and position in the message. Please complete the survey by March 24.

CSTA Documents Demonstrate Alignment of K-12 Standards
The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) has just released a series of documents that show the alignment between the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards and other existing national standards: the Common Core State Standards, the STEM Cluster Topics, and the Partnership for 21st Century Essential Skills. The CSTA created these documents to demonstrate the extent to which computer science courses and content align with a wide variety of national standards. They can help K-12 educators using CSTA standards demonstrate how their computer science courses, resources, or grant proposals contribute to the teaching of other national standards.

According to CSTA Curriculum Committee Chair Deborah Seehorn, "It is no secret that K-12 education is now completely standards-focused, and our efforts to improve and expand computer science education in K-12 require us to show that we not only have rigorous standards, but that our standards intersect well with the key national standards from other organizations." The downloadable documents are available on the Curriculum web page of the CSTA website.
 
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 SC12. The next conferences accepting submissions are: Learn about more competitions on the SRC submissions page.

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. Twenty 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 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: Albert T. Wong
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 Albert Wong. Albert is an IT Architect with IBM Retail On Demand Emerging Business Opportunities (EBO), the IBM skunkworks organization missioned to increase IBM business and technical solutions within the retail industry. He was formerly with the IBM Global Services Linux and Grid EBO, building IBM's initial entry into the Linux and Grid Computing market, IBM Global Services Application Services and IBM Sales and Distribution Technical Sales Support. Due to the dynamic nature of EBOs, his skills span the whole spectrum of IT business and technical development, from technical pre-sales, solution design and implementation, offering development to ecosystem enablement. As a result of his thought leadership and business and technical knowledge in the Open Source and Linux space, he was the co-leader of the IGS Open Source Community of Practice, an IBM internal grassroots knowledge network, where he co-leads community, communication and knowledge sharing activities for 7,100+ IBMers.

In his spare time, Albert is very active in Asian American Civil Rights and is an officer for the Organization of Chinese Americans. He is a former president of the University of California Irvine Alumni Association Information and Computer Science chapter. He enjoys world travel and donating time to worthy causes and helping his family's business. He holds a BS in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.
For more information on Albert, please visit his DSP speaker information 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 December 27, 2012 to February 20, 2013:

ACM Student Chapters:
  • Amrita Sai ACM Student Chapter (AASC), Vijayawada, India
  • Boise State University ACM-W Student Chapter, Boise, Idaho
  • California State University-Long Beach ACM SIGWEB Student Chapter
  • El Paso Community College ACM Student Chapter, El Paso, Texas
  • Jawaharlal Nehru University ACM Student Chapter, New Delhi, India
  • Jerusalem College of Engineering ACM Student Chapter, Chennai, India
  • National Institute of Technology ACM Student Chapter, Jamshedpur, India
  • NIT Warangal ACM Student Chapter, Warangal, India
  • OC Technical College ACM Student Chapter, Orangeburg, South Carolina
  • Old Dominion University ACM-W Student Chapter, Norfolk, Virginia
  • Pradnyan Dypcoe-AK ACM Student Chapter, Pune, India
  • Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University ACM-W Student Chapter, Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia
  • RGCER IT ACM Student Chapter, Nagpur, India
  • Sree Buddha College of Engg. ACM Student Chapter, Alappuzha, India
  • Sri Guru ACM Student Chapter, Coimbatore, India
  • Surya School of Engineering and Technology ACM Student Chapter, Rajpura, India
  • Thapar University ACM Student Chapter, Patiala, India
  • UMass Lowell ACM Student Chapter, Lowell, Massachusetts
  • UNC-Chapel Hill ACM Student Chapter, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
  • University of Kurdistan ACM Student Chapter, Sanandaj, Iran
  • University of Utah ACM Student Chapter, Salt Lake City, Utah
  • UW-Whitewater ACM Student Chapter, Whitewater, Wisconsin
ACM Professional Chapters:
  • Nagpur ACM Chapter, Nagpur, India
  • Quebec City ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter, Quebec, Canada
  • CIR Abuja ACM Chapter, Abuja, Nigeria
  • Tel Aviv ACM SIGCHI Chapter, Tel Aviv, Israel
  • Trivandrum ACM Chapter, Trivandrum, India
ACM-W News

NZ_OzWIT Celebration Gathers Women from Australia and New Zealand
The NZ_OzWIT Celebration of Women in Computing event was the first joint New Zealand and Australian Celebration of Women in Computing which was held in Christchurch, New Zealand on the October 10 and 11. While the total number of attendees was relatively small (approximately 50 delegates: 20% graduate students, 40% faculty and 40% industry professionals), this was offset by the passion and interest of the participants. The recurrent themes from the sessions and networking were: persistence, challenge, passion, enthusiasm, growth and balance. There were many highlights, including the final session of the conference, "Build Our Own Brand," which was led by Jo Miller, creator of Women's Leadership Coaching. Former ACM president Dame Wendy Hall delivered a keynote on the ever-changing frontier of computing. It was noisy, networking, and energetic, and gave every attendee solid takeaway advice for the future. Every attendee left well prepared to go forward and model the workplace culture they wanted, mentor women to enter computing, and become leading influencers in their organizations. Read more about the event in a blog from conference committee member Catherine Lang.

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, Morgan & Claypool to Co-publish e-Books on Cutting-Edge Computing Research
ACM has entered into a long-term agreement with Morgan & Claypool to co-publish a series of scholarly books that capture the newest advances in computing research. These books, to be available from both ACM and Morgan & Claypool later this year, will feature research surveys and graduate-level textbooks that reflect high-quality, innovative research in a wide area of computing and information technology. All the titles in the ACM Books Series will be accessible from the ACM Digital Library (DL) as well as a wide range of commercial eBook platforms including Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble. Downloads of these books on multiple devices including mobile applications will also be available.
Read the ACM press release.

New Journal: ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC)
ACM's newest journal, ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation, focuses on the intersection of computer science and economics. Vincent Conitzer and Randoph P. McAfee are the co-Editors-in-Chief. Read more about the journal in the editors' introduction, and view the home page in the ACM Digital Library. Subscribe to TEAC.

ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation Seeks New Editor-in-Chief
ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS), the publication of high-quality research and developmental results in computer simulation, is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due April 1.

New Blog on ACM interactions Site Generates Buzz
The ACM interactions site is attracting a lot of buzz … and bloggers! Many of the leading voices in the HCI community are sharing their thoughts and opinions with a worldwide audience in a new blog. Practitioners and researchers present new ideas, controversial topics, and personal reflections about the field of HCI, interaction design and more every week. In one week you are likely to hear from Jonathan Grudin, Jonathan Bean, Joe Sokohl, Elizabeth Churchill, Jeffrey Bardzell and Phoenix Perry. Readers are encouraged to join the dialogue!

Hot Topics Editor Needed for Computing Reviews
Computing Reviews, the post-publication review and comment journal of ACM, is seeking volunteers interested in serving as a category editor for Hot Topics.

CACM Reports: Building Responsive Large-Scale Web Services
Delivering the next generation of cloud services requires consistently responsive massive-scale computing systems that keep the tail of latency distribution short, write Google Inc. Fellows Jeffrey Dean and Luiz André Barroso. In the February cover story of Communications of the ACM, they outline some common causes for high-latency episodes in large online services and describe "tail-tolerant" techniques that reduce their severity or mitigate their effect on whole-system performance. Since these techniques often rely on existing capacity for fault tolerance, they can be implemented with a modest overhead. Also in this issue, ACM Publications Board Co-chairs Ronald Boisvert and Jack Davidson address the critical role of nonprofit professional societies in developing sustainable economic models in the age of open access. They describe the array of options that ACM has chosen for ACM authors and Special interest Groups to enable a natural, stable evolution of the publication enterprise into the future. In his column, ACM President Vint Cerf surveys the multidimensional efforts of the computing field, including ACM, to stimulate interest in all aspects of computing. He challenges readers to submit their ideas for broadening the participation of a demographically diverse population.

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: Rethinking Passwords
In his article for ACM Queue, William "Ches" Cheswick, formerly with Bell Labs, writes, "There is an authentication plague upon the land. We have to claim and assert our identity repeatedly to a host of authentication trolls, each jealously guarding an Internet service of some sort. Each troll has specific rules for passwords, and the rules vary widely and incomprehensibly." Each site seems to have different password requirements regarding length and which characters are allowed. These requirements stem from a 1985 Department of Defense Computer Security Center guide known as the Green Book, and Cheswick says that it's high time we updated those specifications.

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ACM in the News

"Can New Software Testing Frameworks Bring Us to Provably Correct Software?"
CIO, February 13, 2013
ACM A.M. Turing Award winner Fred Brooks suggests using multiple "bronze bullets" to incrementally improve each software testing activity, instead of trying to find a "silver bullet" to automate programming.

"Crowdsourced Language App Seeks to Translate Entire Web"
USA Today, February 4, 2013
Carnegie Mellon University professor and 2011 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award recipient Luis von Ahn has developed an app version of Duolingo, a program designed to put millions of people to work translating the Web into Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and English.

"Holograms Seen as Tools to Teach Future Generations About Holocaust, Retell Survivors' Stories"
Washington Post, February 2, 2013
In the future, holograms could be used to teach classes and provide expert opinion on subjects when real people are unavailable, says USC professor Paul Debevec. Debevec serves on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

"Computing guru makes case for better education"
Gulf News, January 27, 2013
"We have more data than ever before, yet not enough IT professionals to meet the demand," says Chuck Thacker, a professor and technical fellow at Microsoft Research and 2009 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient.

"Intellectual Property Industry Must Move Information Into Public Domain"
The Hindu, January 24, 2013
Google Chief Internet Evangelist and ACM president Vint Cerf, referring to the recent suicide of computer activist Aaron Swartz, says greater sharing of information and open access are needed.

"The Job Market of 2045"
IEEE Spectrum, January 22, 2013
Rice University professor and Communications of the ACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Vardi predicts that by 2045 artificial intelligence will have progressed to a point that machines will be able to perform a significant percentage of human work.

"New Advanced Computing Institute to Tackle Big Problems"
Seattle Times, January 9, 2013
The University of Washington and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently formed the Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing, with the goal of solving some of the world's most challenging problems. "The new center is fundamentally about methodology," says USACM member Ed Lazowska, director of the UW eScience Institute.

"Warsaw Team on Skype Can Send Silent Message"
PhysOrg.com, January 8, 2013
A professor in Warsaw knows a way in which to communicate privately on Skype by using silence. He and his research team plan to present SkypeHide at the First ACM Information Hiding and Multimedia Security Workshop in June.

"Vint Cerf: Nobody's Too Old for Tech"
Computerworld, January 8, 2013
Technology has not only changed the way we communicate but it is changing the way we live our lives, says Google Chief Internet Evangelist and ACM president Vint Cerf, speaking at the International CES show.

"Google Researcher Finds Most-Used English Words, Letters"
TPM Idea Lab, January 7, 2013
Google Research's Peter Norvig (an ACM Fellow) recently published the results of a study that updated the 1965 Bell Labs survey of about 20,000 words gathered from a variety of printed sources.

"Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later"
New York Times, January 6, 2013
In less than a year since Stanford University professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng launched Coursera, the online education company has attracted a million users and $22 million in venture capital. Koller is recipient of the first ACM - Infosys Foundation Award, given in 2007.
 

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