ACM MemberNet - July 9, 2013

Welcome to the July 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.

July 9, 2013

ACM President Vint Cerf Awarded Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

ACM President and Google VP and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf has been awarded the prestigious inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. Cerf and fellow recipients Robert Kahn (who received the 2004 ACM Turing Award along with Cerf), Marc Andreessen, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and Louis Pouzin were awarded the £1 million prize for their pioneering work in developing the Internet.
Read the NBC News press release.

Russian, Chinese, Polish Universities Take Multiple Top Spots in ACM ICPC Programming Contest

Russian universities placed in several of the top 10 spots, and Polish and Chinese universities in two, in the 2013 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC), held June 30 to July 4 in St. Petersburg. First place went to St. Petersburg National Research University of IT, Mechanics and Optics, followed by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, The University of Tokyo, National Taiwan University, St. Petersburg State University, University of Warsaw, Taras Shevchenko Kiev National University, Belarusian State University, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Moscow State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Tsinghua University, and Perm State University. This international competition pits teams of three university students against nine complex, real-world problems and a demanding five-hour deadline. The 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.
See the full results of the competition.
Read the ACM press release.

Douglas Engelbart, 1997 ACM Turing Award Recipient, Dies

Computing pioneer Douglas Engelbart, who is credited with inventing the computer mouse, died July 2 at his home in Atherton, California. He was 88. His contributions to the field date back to the 1950s, when computing was in its infancy. His insights into networked, interactive computing systems and interfaces led to a more collaborative, personal computing environment.

He received his BS in Electrical Engineering at Oregon State College in 1948, after serving in the US Navy as a radar technician, and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1953 and 1955, respectively, from University of California, Berkeley.

Engelbart received the ACM A.M. Turing Award in 1997 "For an inspiring vision of the future of interactive computing and the invention of key technologies to help realize this vision." He was profoundly influenced by Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think," which promoted the ethos of making knowledge widely available.
Read the New York Times obituary.

ACM Special Interest Groups Elect New Officers

The following SIGs have elected new officers for terms beginning July 1, 2013 and ending June 30, 2015:

SIGAda: Chair, David A. Cook; Vice Chair, S. Tucker Taft; Secretary-Treasurer, Clyde Roby; International Representative, Dirk Craeynest
SIGAPP: Chair, Sung Y. Shin; Vice Chair, Jiman Hong; Secretary, Michael Ignaz Schumacher; Treasurer, Tei-Wei Kuo
SIGBED: Chair, Raj Rajkumar; Vice Chair, Christopher D. Gill; Secretary-Treasurer, Xenofon Koutsoukos
SIGCOMM: Chair, Srinivasan Keshav; Vice Chair, Renata Cruz Teixeira; Secretary-Treasurer, Jörg Ott
SIGDOC: Chair, Liza Potts; Vice Chair, Davide Bolchini; Secretary-Treasurer, Stewart Whittemore
SIGKDD: Chair, Bing Liu; Secretary-Treasurer, Michael Zeller; Board of Directors, Deepak Agarwal, Johannes Gehrke, Ying Li, Jian Pei, Raghu Ramakrishnan, Mohammed Zaki
SIGMIS: Chair, Janice C. Sipior; Vice Chair, Eileen M. Trauth; Secretary-Treasurer, Christina N. Outlay
SIGMM: Chair, Shih-Fu Chang; Vice Chair, Rainer Lienhart; Director of Conferences, Nicu Sebe
SIGMOBILE: Chair, Suman Banerjee; Vice Chair, Lili Qiu; Secretary, Alec Wolman; Treasurer, Marco Gruteser
SIGSAC: Chair, Trent Jaeger; Vice Chair, Ninghui Li; Secretary-Treasurer, Barbara Carminati
SIGSAM: Chair, Ilias Kotsireas; Vice Chair, Jean-Guillaume Dumas; Secretary, Ziming Li; Treasurer, Agnes Szanto

The following SIGs have elected new officers for terms beginning July 1, 2013 and ending June 30, 2016:

SIGART: Chair, Yolanda Gil; Vice Chair, Sanmay Das; Secretary-Treasurer, Susan L. Epstein
SIGCSE: Chair, Susan H. Rodger; Vice Chair, Paul Tymann; Secretary, Judy Sheard; Treasurer, Amber Settle; At-Large Member, Tiffany Barnes, Alison Clear, Sue C. Fitzgerald
SIGGRAPH: Director-at-Large: James O'Brien, Jacquelyn Ford Marie, Ramesh Raskar
SIGHPC: Chair, Cherri M. Pancake; Vice Chair, Jeff Hollingsworth; Treasurer, Becky Jennings Verastegui; Member-at-Large, Torsten Hoefler, Rajeev Thakur
SIGIR: Chair, Charles L. A. Clarke; Vice Chair, Yoelle Maarek; Secretary, Jaap Kamps; Treasurer, Diane Kelly

The following SIG has elected new officers for terms beginning July 1, 2013 and ending June 30, 2017:

SIGMOD: Chair, Donald Kossmann; Vice Chair, Anastasia Ailamaki; Secretary-Treasurer, Magdalena Balazinska

The following SIG has elected new officers for terms beginning July 1, 2013 and ending June 30, 2019:

SIGEVO: Executive Committee: Kalyanmoy Deb, John Holland, Michael O'Neill, Marc Schoenauer, Terence Soule, Darrell Whitley

AWARDS

ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial Fellowship Recipients

Endowed in memory of George Michael, one of the founding fathers of the SC Conference series, the ACM IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial Fellowships honor exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus areas are in high performance computing, networking, storage, and large-scale data analysis. ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the SC Conference support this award.

Fellowship winners are selected each year based on overall potential for research excellence, the degree to which technical interests align with those of the HPC community, academic progress to date, recommendations by their advisor and others, and a demonstration of current and anticipated use of HPC resources. The Fellowship includes a $5,000 honorarium, plus travel and registration to receive the award at the annual SC conference. The recipients for 2012 are:

Ryan Gabrys (University of California, Los Angeles), for "Extending the Lifetime of New Storage Devices Using Coding Techniques"
Gagan Gupta (University of Wisconsin-Madison), for "Restartable Parallel Execution of Sequential Programs on HPCs"
Amanda Peters Randles (Harvard University), for "Multiscale Hemodynamics"
Yanhua Sun (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), for "Performance Analysis and Optimization of a Message-Driven Asynchronous Parallel Programming Model on Exascale"

Vicki Hanson Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

ACM Secretary/Treasurer Vicki Hanson has joined a distinguished group of more than 40 experts to be elected as Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013. She was inducted into the RSE on May 20 in recognition of her contributions to Human Computer Interaction.

Hanson is Professor of Inclusive Technologies at the University of Dundee, and Research Staff Member Emeritus from IBM Research. An active ACM member for more than 20 years, she is Past Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group (SIG) Governing Board, Past Chair of ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS), and founer and co-Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing. In 2008, she received the ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award for the application of HCI research to pressing social needs. She was named an ACM Fellow in 2004 for contributions to computing technologies for people with disabilities, and received the 2013 Anita Borg Woman of Vision Award for Social Impact.

The RSE was founded in 1783 with the aim of "the advancement of useful knowledge," and is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. Former and current Fellows of the RSE include Sir Charles Babbage (elected 1820), Sir Charles Darwin, Nobellist Francis Crick among others. More recent luminaries have included Robin Milner, Samson Abramsky, Sidney Michaelson, professor of computer science and "Founding Father" of computing at the University of Edinburgh, and Andrew McGettrick, past chair of the ACM Education Board.

MEMBER RECOGNITION

Call for ACM Senior and Distinguished Member and Fellows 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 September 3.

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.

Fellow is ACM's most prestigious member grade recognizing the top 1% of ACM members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community. The deadline for nominations is September 5. Please read the late James Horning's article, Making the case for an ACM Fellow. (Jim served for over 10 years as Co-Chair of the Awards Committee.)

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 35 distinct technological fields. Some awards presented (or to be presented) at recent conferences:

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

SIGGRAPH 2013, July 21 to 25, Anaheim, California

The 40th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques is the premier international event on computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2013 is expected to draw more than 20,000 attendees from five continents. The five-day interdisciplinary educational experience includes a three-day exhibition that attracts hundreds of exhibitors from around the world. 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. Co-located events include the Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, High-Performance Graphics, Digital Production Symposium, Expressive 2013 (CAe + NPar + SBIM), and Symposium on Spatial User Interaction.

JCDL 2013, July 22 to 26, Indianapolis, Indiana

The Joint Conference on Digital Libraries is a major international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, organizational, and social issues. The theme for JCDL 2013 is "Digital Libraries at the Crossroads," in recognition of the changes forthcoming from the age of mass digitization, big data, and the ever-changing nature of scholarly communications. A retrospective look at the past, present and future of digital libraries will inform the keynote speaker topics. Scheduled speakers are Jill Cousins, Executive Director of the Europeana Foundation; Clifford Lynch, who leads the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI); and David De Roure, professor of e-research and director of the interdisciplinary Oxford e-Research Centre, with a coordinating role in Digital Humanities at Oxford University.

KDD 2013, August 11 to 14, Chicago, Illinois

The SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge, Discovery, and Data Mining gathers data mining and big data researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to share their ideas, research results and experiences. This event includes 10 full-day workshops on topics ranging from applications of Big Data to urban computing to social network mining, and four half-day workshops on Multimedia Data Mining, Multiple Clusterings, Outlier Detection and Description, and Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML). In addition, attendees will also benefit from paper presentations, poster sessions, workshops, tutorials, panels, exhibits, demonstrations, and the KDD Cup competition. Scheduled keynote speakers are Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google; Andrew Ng, a co-founder of Coursera and computer science faculty member at Stanford University; Stephen J. Wright, a professor of computer sciences at University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Raghu Ramakrishnan, Technical Fellow and CTO Information Services at Microsoft.

SIGCOMM 2013, August 12 to 16, Hong Kong, China

SIGCOMM is the annual conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication on the applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communication. Workshops at the conference include Future Human-Centric Multimedia Networking; HotPlanet; Hot Topics in Software Defined Networking; Information-Centric Networking; Mobile Cloud Computing; and Software Radio Implementation. Tutorials will cover Software-Defined Networking; White Space Networking: Technology and Opportunities; Internet Video; SDN Troubleshooting; and Data Center Networking.

PUBLIC POLICY

White House Executive Order on Open Data Echoes USACM's Recommendations

The White House issued an Executive Order outlining a policy to make government-published online information open and machine readable. This Open Data Policy echoes recommendations made by USACM (ACM's US Public Policy Council), including: data published by the government should be in formats and approaches that promote analysis and reuse of that data; information should be posted so as to be accessible to citizens with limitations and disabilities; citizens should be able to download complete datasets of regulatory, legislative or other information; and other recommendations.

USACM Comments on Proposed US-EU Trade Agreement

In a statement to the US House Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Trade on the US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, USACM urged the US government to negotiate intellectual property provisions that uphold relevant domestic laws and international law based on three principles. These principles are aimed at fostering innovation of software and digital computing, preserving the rights of users of these technologies, and minimizing barriers that could impede the economic potential of digital trade, e-commerce, and internet-based services. Read the statement on USACM's Public Policy blog.

USACM Offers Technology Assistance to Presidential Commission on Election Administration

USACM, ACM's US Public Policy Committee, sent a letter to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration highlighting the technology requirements that are critical to an effective voting process. The letter was sent in advance of the Commission's first meeting on June 21 in Washington, DC. The requirements, which are unique to today's voting systems, are designed to ensure trust, timeliness, security, privacy, accuracy, accessibility, and usability in the age of computer-based technologies.

In the letter to Presidential Commission co-chairs Robert Bauer and Benjamin Ginsberg, USACM Chair Eugene Spafford noted that technical expertise is important to understand the risks and advantages of different technologies. He urged the Commission to take advantage of expertise available from technology researchers and practitioners in academia, government, and industry, and offered USACM's continuing advice and recommendations on technology issues as they arise. USACM cited a series of requirements that are appropriate to voting systems, including reliability, responsiveness, security, privacy, auditing, accessibility, and usability.
Read the ACM press release.

MEMBER PROGRAMS

ACM Announces Ambassadors for ACM Grand Prize Winners

ACM congratulates the top recruiters for this year's member referral campaign, Ambassadors for ACM. Venkata R. G. Nallagattla, Assistant Professor at PVP Siddhartha Instititue of Technology, Vijayawada Area, India qualified for the first Grand Prize, an Android tablet. The Second Grand Prize, a Barnes & Noble Nook e-book reader, went to Anant Bhaskar Garg, an assistant professor at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India. The top Ambassador for the month of June was Sarabjeet S. Waraich.

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 2013–2014 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 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.

ACM Member Group Dental Insurance Plan

As an ACM member in good standing in the US, you are eligible to enroll in ACM's new Dental Indemnity Plan, administered by Marsh U.S. Consumer, a service of Seabury and Smith, Inc. This new dental plan offers the freedom to choose your dentist and helps insulate your wallet against pricey dental bills. Coverage is available to you, your spouse, and dependent children. More than 150 different types of dental services are covered ranging from preventive services all the way up to major treatments, like root canals, dentures and oral surgeries. Additional savings are available by using a dentist in the SmileMax® Network. Convenience allows you to have payments made directly to you or your dentist. Finally, your acceptance is guaranteed. Choose your dentist, a payment option that fits your budget and over 150 available services! Click here to learn more or call 1-800-503-9230.

LEARNING CENTER

Register for July 17 ACM-SIGHPC Webcast, "Changing How Programmers Think about Parallel Programming"

Register now to attend the next free ACM Webcast, Changing How Programmers Think about Parallel Programming, to be presented on Wednesday, July 17, 2013, at 2 PM ET (1 pm CT/12 noon MT/11 am PT/6 pm GMT) as part of the ongoing ACM Learning Webinar series. Join William Gropp, Director of the Parallel Computing Institute at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and moderator John West, Director of the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program. The talk will be followed by a live question and answer session.

ACM Learning Webinars are free with registration, available for streaming on all major mobile devices, and are recorded for on-demand viewing (registration required).

Watch ACM Webcast, "IBM Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!" on Demand

Register to watch ACM's latest webcast, "IBM Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!", presented on June 13 by Adam Lally, member of the DeepQA project that built the Watson question answering system, which won the now-famous Jeopardy! Man vs. Machine Challenge, and moderator Will Tracz, Lockheed Martin Fellow Emeritus and Chair of ACM SIGSOFT (the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering). The talk is followed by a live question and answer session. (Registration required for on-demand viewing.)

Register for Fall 2013 Semester at Stevens WebCampus

Did you know that ACM members receive a 10% discount off regular graduate tuition at Stevens Insitute of Technology's WebCampus? Graduate tracks include Cybersecurity, Information Systems, MBA in Technology Management, and many more. Orientation for the Fall Semester begins August 26. For more information, visit ACM's Stevens WebCampus page.

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

Microsoft Research Faculty Summit to Be Streamed Live July 15

Join us for a broadcast of the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit streamed live from Redmond on Monday, July 15, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PDT (12:00 to 8:30 p.m. EDT). This free online event offers highlights, such as the opening and closing keynotes, streamed on location from the Faculty Summit. Plus, you'll hear from leading scientific and academic researchers who are making social and scientific advances—from prediction engines to quantum computing breakthroughs-with the help of technology. The event will feature such luminaries as:

Bill Gates, former Chief Executive and current Chairman of Microsoft
Krysta Svore, Researcher and Manager of the Quantum Architectures and Computation Group at Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington
Doug Burger, Director, Client and Cloud Apps, Microsoft Research
David Pennock, Principal Researcher and Assistant Managing Director of Microsoft Research, New York City

STUDENT NEWS

ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial Fellowship Recipients (see story under Awards)

Computing Community Consortium's Site Lists Undergraduate Summer Research Positions

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) offers a website listing undergraduate summer research positions. The listings are linked from the CCC's Computer Science Research Opportunities & Graduate School (CSGS) site, a resource clearinghouse for CS undergraduates. Researchers are able to post their summer research opportunities on the listing site for free. The site enables students to find summer research programs, and enables 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 can also find information and advice on applying to graduate school in computing fields.

Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions

ACM Student Research Competitions (SRCs), sponsored by Microsoft Research, offer a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research at well-known ACM sponsored and co-sponsored conferences before a panel of judges and attendees. The most recent SRC winners presented at PLDI 2013. The next conferences accepting submissions are:

MODELS 2013, September 29-October 4, deadline July 15
SC13, November 17-22, deadline July 31
CGO 2014, February 15-19, 2014, deadline September 13
SAC 2014, March 24-28, 2014, deadline September 13

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 complimentary 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.

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS PROGRAM

Featured ACM Distinguished Speaker: Philippe Kruchten

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 Philippe Kruchten. He is professor of software engineering in the department of electrical and computer engineering of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He joined UBC in 2004 after a career of more than 30 years in industry, where he worked mostly with large software-intensive systems design in telecommunication, defense, aerospace and transportation. Some of his experience is embodied in the Rational Unified Process (RUP) whose development he directed from 1995 till 2003, when Rational Software was bought by IBM. RUP includes an architectural design method, known as "RUP 4+1 views." His current research interests still reside mostly with software architecture, especially architectural decisions and the decision process, as well as software engineering processes, in particular the application of agile processes in large and globally distributed teams. Kruchten is a senior member of IEEE Computer Society, member of ACM and INCOSE, the founder of Agile Vancouver, and a professional engineer in British Columbia. He has a diploma in mechanical engineering from Ecole Centrale de Lyon (France), and a doctorate degree in informatics from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris.
For more information on Philippe, please visit his DSP speaker information page.
Philippe Kruchten's Digital Library author page.

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

Student Chapter Excellence Awards Announced

Congratulations to the winners of the 2012-2013 Student Chapter Excellence Awards! This program recognizes ACM student chapters worldwide that display considerable initiative during the academic year. Chapters submit applications in five areas: Outstanding Chapter Activity, Outstanding Website, Outstanding Recruitment Program, Outstanding Community Service, and Outstanding School Service. Winning chapters in each of these five areas receive $500 and a "best of" icon to proudly display on their chapter's Web page. The winners for 2012-2013 are:

Outstanding Chapter Activities: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Outstanding Community Service: Lebanese American University
Outstanding Website: CA State University of Long Beach
Outstanding Recruitment Program: University of Tehran
Outstanding School Service: National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST) School of Engineering & Computer Sciences

Learn more about what's happening at these schools by reading their winning submissions, and how you can enter your school's chapter in next year's competition, on the Student Chapter Excellence Awards website.

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 May 24 to July 2, 2013:

ACM Student Chapters:

Golden Coders Student Chapter (Cameron University), Lawton, Oklahoma
Mind's String ACM Student Chapter, Guanajuato, Mexico
Spokane Falls Applied Technology ACM Student Chapter (Spokane Falls Community College), Spokane Valley, Washington
Imperial College London ACM Student Chapter, London, UK
Northeastern Illinois University ACM Chapter, Chicago
UMT Sialkot ACM Student Chapter, Sialkot, Pakistan

ACM-W NEWS

A Woman in Computing Remembers ACM-W Projects that Led Her to Cisco

by Gloria Townsend, Co-Project-Director (with Paula Gabbert), ACM-W Student Chapters Project
ACM-W projects not only help women in computing build successful careers, but also coordinate with each other in ways that maximize the help that ACM-W provides for young women. This month, ACM-W submits an excerpt from an unsolicited email from Sijin Abdulkarim (now working for Cisco Systems, Inc. in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina):

"It's been some long time since I attended INWIC [Indiana Celebration of Women in Computing] 2010. From there on, I felt my life changed after winning the top graduate student poster award. Following my INWIC scholarship to Grace Hopper [in] Atlanta, I was hired by Cisco Systems through the career fair in Atlanta. Later I founded the Women in Technology organization at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. We are celebrating our 3rd Annual Networking and Career event at WIT." (WIT became an official ACM-W Student Chapter on May 7, 2012.) "I see these things as a sequence of events that happened after attending INWIC 2010. I will be always thankful to great women like all of you for organizing such events."

The ACM-W Student Chapters Project invites women without a student support organization and all existing "women in computing" organizations to charter an ACM-W Student Chapter (as did Sijin's WIT chapter) in order to affiliate with our professional organization and become part of the network of almost 100,000 computer scientists around the world. (For more information, write [email protected].)

ACM-W Embraces Community College Participation with Kentucky Regional Event

On March 29 and 30, the first community college regional Celebration of Women in Computing was held in Berea, Kentucky at the Historic Boone Tavern, a hotel and restaurant of Berea College staffed mainly by their students. The Kentucky Community College Women in Computing Celebration (KYCC-WiC) hosted faculty and students from almost half the schools from the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, as well as two state universities. Speakers included Angie Anderson, Development Manager for the Enterprise Client Team at Microsoft; Kelly Hagan, Associate Professor, Psychology at Bluegrass Community and Technical College; and Basha Roberts, founder and ownder of LexTech, a business and technology company based in Lexington who is now in the MIS department at Alltech, Inc. Read the article by Elizabeth Hawthorne, Chair, ACM Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges and ACM-W Council Member, in the June issue of ACM Inroads magazine, and learn how you can plan a Regional Celebration event at your community college.

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 Regional Celebrations page 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

Future Editorial Directions for ACM Transactions TAAS, TEAC, and TOPC

ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS) has shortened its review time and undertaken greater community engagement. Read the co-Editors-in-Chief editorial here.

The co-Editors-in Chief of the new journal, ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC), have ambitious plans. Read their introduction to the debut issue here.

The new ACM journal, ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing (TOPC), is now accepting submissions. Visit the submissions site for more information.

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems Seeks New Editor-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS) is looking for a new Editor-in-Chief whose term will begin on December 1, 2013. He/she will be appointed for three years, with the possibility of one three-year renewal. We are looking for a well-established person with a good record for his/her research achievements in embedded systems and for his/her services to the community. Please submit your application by August 30 to the chair of the search committee, Rajesh K. Gupta.

CACM Reports: Computing's Critical Role in Controlling Epidemics

Recent advances in computing, big data and computational thinking can support public efforts to control communicable diseases, say researchers at Virginia Tech. In the July issue of Communications of the ACM, Madhav Marathe and Anil Kumar Vullikanti outline how computational models help in understanding the space-time dynamics of epidemics, and how algorithms can be used to evaluate interventions such as vaccinations, anti-viral approaches, social distancing and school closures. Also in this issue, Communications Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi addresses technological unemployment, which economists are debating as they assess the impact of robots and automation on jobs. He cites economists on both sides of the issue, but observes that the debate has recently moved from economics to computer science. In response, he announces the launch of this debate in the pages of Communications, starting with his editorial and an article in this issue by Martin Ford on the influence of artificial intelligence on economic systems.

ACM President Vint Cerf delves into the controversy over certification for software engineers. Once firmly opposed to the idea of professional licensing for liability consideration, he now questions whether the software profession will escape some kind of deep accountability in light of our dependency on increasing numbers of programs, large and small, and asks readers to comment.
Read the press release.

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.

ACM Queue Presents: Structured Deferral: Synchronization via Procrastination

In Structured Deferral: Synchronization via Procrastination, Paul E. Mckenney, Distinguished Engineer in IBM's Linux Technology Center, argues that, "We simply do not have a synchronization mechanism that can enforce mutual exclusion." Developers often take a proactive approach to software design, especially those from cultures valuing industriousness over procrastination. Lazy approaches, however, have proven their value, with examples including reference counting, garbage collection, and lazy evaluation. This structured deferral takes the form of synchronization via procrastination, specifically reference counting, hazard pointers, and read-copy-update (RCU).

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.

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.

ACM IN THE NEWS

"A Retrospective Report of the Simons Institute Visions on the Theory of Computing Symposium"

Computing Community Consortium, June 28, 2013
University of California, Berkeley professor and ACM Fellow and Gödel Prize recipient Christos Papadimitriou co-organized the Simons Institute Visions on the Theory of Computing Symposia, sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium, which took place in May.

"Gaming the System"

MIT News, June 18, 2013
MIT EECS professor Constantinos Daskalakis, recipient of ACM's 2008 Doctoral Dissertation Award, is one of a handful of researchers there who are working extensively on game theory, and who have spent substantial time on questions more typically addressed by the social sciences.

India New England, June 14, 2013
Affectionately known as Amma, the Indian native has been helping groups around the world through a number of various initiatives. The social activist is the founder and chancellor of Amrita University, one of the fastest growing institutions for higher learning in India. In 2010, Amrita University organized the ACM-W Celebration of Women in Computing conference, the first ever conference of its kind in India.

"All Expectations Exceeded: One Out of Three Laureates Attends the 1st Heidelberg Laureate Forum"

PresseBox, June 14, 2013
38 Abel, Fields and Turing Laureates confirmed their attendance at the 1st Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF), which will take place from September 22 until 27, 2013. The laureates will meet 200 of the most talented young researchers in the fields of mathematics and computer science from 47 countries. The Forum is organized in collaboration with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM; Turing Award), the International Mathematical Union (IMU; Fields Medal) and the Norwegian Academy for Science and Letters (DNVA; Abel Prize).

"Tech firms call for mandatory computer classes"

Boston Globe, June 11, 2013
"When we look at what jobs are available, and what paths students are pursuing, what we see is a profound disconnect," said Chris Stephenson, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). She said the tech executives are right to pressure Massachusetts to add more computer-specific education, as opposed to making it a small part of a broader science and engineering curriculum.

"Securing the Cloud"

MIT News, June 10, 2013
Researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have created an encryption algorithm that could improve security for cloud computing technology. "Our result is in some sense the first result showing that you can do this very generally," says MIT professor Shafi Goldwasser, who together with professor Silvio Micali are the most recent recipients of ACM's A.M. Turing Award. They recently presented their work at ACM's 45th Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC 2013).

"Design Automation Conference at 50: Bring on the Women, Cloud and Maybe Even Open Source"

Network World, June 6, 2013
The Design Automation Conference recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, prompting the industry and academic community to both take a look back and to predict what the future may hold.

"Cerf Sees a Problem: Today's Digital Data Could Be Gone Tomorrow"

Computerworld, June 4, 2013
Google chief Internet evangelist and ACM president Vint Cerf is worried that much of the data generated since the Internet's beginning, as well as future data, will become irretrievable over time.