ACM MemberNet - June 25, 2015

Welcome to the June 2015 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.

June 25, 2015

ACM Appoints New CEO

ACM has named Bobby Schnabel executive director and CEO effective November 1. Schnabel joins ACM after eight years as professor and dean of the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. As CEO, he will work with ACM's volunteer community to provide strategic vision and to develop sustainable business models to ensure ACM's continued worldwide membership, publications and revenue growth.

Schnabel has a long history of service to the computing community, and has served in several capacities, including chair, of ACM SIGNUM. When Schnabel assumes his role as CEO, he will step down as founding chair of the ACM Education Policy Committee. Dedicated to improving diversity in computing, Schnabel is a co-founder and executive team member of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). He also serves as chair of the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Advisory Board.

Schnabel succeeds John R. White, ACM's first executive director to be named CEO, who will retire after nearly 17 years on July 31. ACM COO Patricia Ryan will serve as acting executive director until Schnabel assumes his new role in November.
Read the ACM news release.

ACM Special Interest Groups Elect New Officers

Each year a number of ACM's Special Interest Groups conduct elections. Listed below are the SIGs that conducted elections in 2015. Follow the link for each SIG to view the election results and contact information for the newly elected officers and board members:

SIGACCESS SIGACT SIGAPP SIGBED SIGBio SIGCHI SIGDA SIGecom SIGEVO ACM SIGGRAPH SIGITE SIGMETRICS SIGMIS SIGOPS SIGPLAN SIGSOFT SIGWEB

ACM Celebrates Computing's Best and Brightest at Annual Banquet

The ACM Awards Banquet is an annual event recognizing technical excellence and outstanding service to the computing field. This year's banquet honoring the 2014 award recipients and newly inducted ACM Fellows was held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on June 20. They were honored for innovations in technology as well as service in advancing the computing profession. The 2014 awards include recognition for advancements in databases, cryptography, networked and software systems, standard software libraries, social connections on the Web, national science and engineering education standards, search and rescue robotics, data processing, and machine learning.

AWARDS

ACM, CSTA Announce New Award to Recognize US High School Students in Computing

ACM and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) have announced a new award, the ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing, to recognize talented high school students in computer science. The program seeks to promote and encourage the field of computer science, as well as to empower young and aspiring learners to pursue computing challenges outside of the traditional classroom environment.

Four winners will be selected annually and each will be awarded a $10,000 prize and cost of travel to the annual ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing Reception where students will demonstrate their programs and discuss their work. The prizes will be funded by a $1 million endowment established by David Cutler and Gordon Bell. The application period for the inaugural award is scheduled to open August 1 and close January 1, 2016. The inaugural awards will be announced in February 2016.
Read the ACM news release.

ACM, IEEE Computer Society Honor Norman Jouppi with 2015 Eckert-Mauchly Award

ACM and IEEE Computer Society jointly presented the Eckert-Mauchly Award to Norman Jouppi at ISCA 2015, the International Symposium on Computer Architecture. He was recognized for pioneering contributions to the design and analysis of high-performance processors and memory systems. With a distinguished career spanning over 35 years, including many notable contributions to the computer architecture field, his major technical contributions can be classified into three broad areas: Memory Hierarchy, Heterogeneous Architectures, and CACTI tools. The Eckert-Mauchly Award is known as the computer architecture community's most prestigious award.
Read the ACM news release.

Ken Kennedy Award Nominations Due July 1

Established in memory of Ken Kennedy, the founder of Rice University's nationally ranked computer science program and one of the world's foremost experts on high-performance computing, this award, consisting of a certificate and $5,000 honorarium, is awarded jointly by the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding contributions to programmability or productivity in high-performance computing together with significant community service or mentoring contributions. Nominations are due July 1.

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. Please read Advice to Those Seeking ACM Senior Members by former Senior Member Committee Chair Susan Rodger on how to submit a strong nomination package.

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 3. 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 10. 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

ISSAC 2015, July 6 to 9, Bath, UK

ISSAC 2015 is the premier conference for research in symbolic computation and computer algebra. The 40th meeting in the series will present a range of contributed research papers on topics covering algorithms, graphs, algebraic geometry, series computation, and more, as well as tutorials, poster sessions, software demonstrations, and vendor exhibits. Invited talks include Erika Ábrahám (RWTH Aachen University), "Building Bridges between Symbolic Computation and Satisfiability Checking"; Éric Schost (University of Western Ontario), "Algorithms for Finite Fields Arithmetic"; and Lihong Zhi (MMRC, Chinese Academy of Sciences), "Optimization Problems over Noncompact Semialgebraic Sets."

GECCO 2015, July 11 to 15, Madrid, Spain

GECCO 2015 will present the latest high-quality results in genetic and evolutionary computation. Topics include: genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, memetic algorithms, hyper heuristics, real-world applications, evolutionary machine learning, evolvable hardware, artificial life, adaptive behaviour, ant colony optimization, swarm intelligence, biological applications, evolutionary robotics, coevolution, artificial immune systems, and more. Scheduled keynote speakers are Kate Smith-Miles, ARC Laureate Fellow, Monash University School of Mathematical Sciences; Ricard Solé, ICREA research professor at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies, University Pompeu Fabra; and Manuel Martín-Loeches, Psychobiology Professor, Complutense University of Madrid and head of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the Center for Human Evolution and Behavior.

ISSTA 2015, July 12 to 17, Baltimore, Maryland

ISSTA 2015 is the leading research symposium on software testing and analysis, bringing together academics, industrial researchers, and practitioners to exchange new ideas, problems, and experience on how to analyze and test software systems. Scheduled keynote speakers are Daniel Jackson, a professor at MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, and Yuanyuan Zhou, Qualcomm Chair professor at University of California–San Diego.

SIGGRAPH 2015, August 9 to 13, Los Angeles, California

At SIGGRAPH 2015, the annual educational and interdisciplinary conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, industry professionals, researchers, artists, software developers and enthusiasts will come together to learn about current developments in graphics. Programs include Emerging Technologies, a Makers session, and Real-Time Live! showcasing the latest trends and techniques for pushing the boundaries of interactive visuals, as well as the Art Gallery and Computer Animation Festival. The keynote speaker is Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, and an activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and advocate of democracy and freedom of the Internet.

SIGIR 2015, August 9 to 13, Santiago, Chile

SIGIR 2015 is the major international forum for the presentation of new research results and for the demonstration of new systems and techniques in information retrieval. Papers will address a host of technical, academic and business topics, exploring applications of IR to inventions that are ubiquitous in our everyday life. SIGIR also includes demonstrations, a Doctoral Consortium, tutorials, and short papers. Workshops will address Graph Search, Neuro-Physiological Methods in IR Research, Privacy-Preserving IR, and more.

KDD 2015, August 10 to 13, Sydney, Australia

Registration is now open for KDD 2015, the premier conference bringing together researchers and practitioners from data mining, knowledge discovery, data analytics, and big data. Sponsored by ACM's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery in Data, KDD will feature keynotes by Daphne Koller, President and Co-founder, Coursera (recipient of the first ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences); Ronny Kohavi, Distinguished Engineer and General Manager, Analysis and Experimentation, Microsoft; Hugh Durrant-Whyte, Professor and ARC Federation Fellow, Faculty of Engineering, University of Sydney; and Susan Athey, The Economics of Technology Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Regional forums will be held in a co-located big data summit August 10-11, and the program includes a one-day mentoring event for students and early career researchers.

SIGCOMM 2015, August 17 to 21, London, UK

SIGCOMM 2015 is the flagship annual conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication. Papers will cover applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communication. Workshops will address mobile technologies; crowdsourcing; middleboxes and network function virtualization; and ethics in networked systems research. Tutorials on open hardware networking, network verification, cloud storage, and P4: programming the network dataplane will include expert presenters and panelists.

SC15, November 15 to 20, Austin, Texas

SC15 is dedicated to showcasing work in high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis by the international HPC community. The core of the conference is the technical program with peer-reviewed content for every track; a series of student programs to engage and foster the next generation of HPC professionals; community awards to honor researchers in the field; and the fastest research network, SCinet, built to support high performing applications and demonstrations during the conference. See submission deadlines for Doctoral Showcase, BoF sessions, and more.

PUBLIC POLICY

USACM Comments on Proposed Federal Accessibility Standards and Guidelines

USACM submitted comments to the US Access Board on updated federal accessibility standards and guidelines for information and communication technology (ICT) under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act. The current standards have been in place for roughly 15 years. The updated standards will apply to websites, social media, mobile apps, interactive kiosks, wireless assistive devices, and other technologies.

USACM Signs Letter to President Obama Urging Wide Adoption of Encryption Technology

USACM signed a letter to President Obama from a variety of civil society organizations urging him to pursue public policies that encourage the wide adoption of strong encryption technology. The letter is responsive to public statements by Obama Administration officials suggesting that US companies should not provide strong encryption in products and services unless the government has the ability to decrypt consumers' data.

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. The 2014–2015 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. Please consider becoming an Ambassador for ACM.

Featured Member Benefit: Credible Student Loan Comparison Service

ACM has partnered with Credible to reduce student loan payments. Credible is a simple, free service that can help ACM members and their families save money by comparing their student loan refinancing options. With Credible, student debt holders can submit a single form and receive offers from multiple lenders. Also visit Credible to learn more about important student loan topics including student loan refinancing, student loan consolidation, student loan reduction, and student loan forgiveness.

LEARNING CENTER

Register to Watch ACM Webinar, "Are You Getting Traction? Tales from the Tech Transfer Trenches" with Satish Chandra, June 25

Register now for the webcast by Satish Chandra and Will Tracz, Are You Getting Traction? Tales from the Tech Transfer Trenches, on June 25 at noon ET. In the past several years, Chandra was involved in taking a variety of software productivity tools to various constituencies within a company: internal users, product teams, and service delivery teams. In this talk, he shares his experiences in interacting with these constituencies, and focuses broadly on tools in two areas: bug finding and test automation. Will Tracz, Lockheed Martin Fellow Emeritus and Chair of ACM SIGSOFT, moderates.

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

Register to Watch ACM Webinar, "What Time Is It?" with George Neville-Neil, July 30

Register now for the ACM July 30 webcast by George Neville-Neil, What Time Is It? A Guide to Time for Software Developers. Neville-Neil reprises the talk he gave at ACM's Applicative conference in February, in which he discussed the role of timekeeping in keeping deployed systems running smoothly. Neville-Neil works on networking and operating system code, teaches courses computer programming-related subjects, and is the columnist behind ACM Queue's "Kode Vicious." The webcast will be moderated by Terry Coatta, CTO, Marine Learning Systems, and member of the ACM Practitioners Board.

New eBooks from Morgan Kaufmann and Syngress

Recently, new titles have been added to the Morgan Kaufmann and Syngress eBook collection, which now numbers nearly 400 titles. New titles include: Accelerating MATLAB with GPU Computing; The Basics of Cloud Computing: Understanding the Fundamentals of Cloud Computing in Theory and Practice; Big Data Analytics: From Strategic Planning to Enterprise Integration with Tools, Techniques, NoSQL, and Graph; Embedded Systems Architecture: A Comprehensive Guide for Engineers and Programmers; Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques; Distributed and Cloud Computing: From Parallel Processing to the Internet of Things; Guerrilla Analytics: A Practical Approach to Working with Data, Hacking and Penetration Testing with Low Power Devices; Joe Celko's Complete Guide to NoSQL: What Every SQL Professional Needs to Know about Non-Relational Databases; and SQL Injection Attacks and Defense. See all the newly added titles here.

Recent Additions to Skillsoft IT and Desktop Video Library

Did you know that ACM members have access to thousands of IT and productivity videos from Skillsoft in the ACM Learning Center? Covering a variety of today's hottest topics, these videos offer "on-the-job" support and solutions for busy practitioners.

Recently, Skillsoft added significant video content in the following knowledge areas: Apache Spark, CICD 1.0, CISSP, CSSLP, Cucumber Fundamentals, DCICT 1.0, Defensive Programming, Drupal 8 First Look, Foundations of Android Security, Hadoop Ecosystem, Java SE 8 Fundamentals, JIRA Fundamentals, JSON Fundamentals, Mac OS X Yosemite, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft SQL Server 2014, OWASP Top 10, RavenDB, VMware Workstation 11 Fundamentals, What's New in CISSP 2015, and WordPress. To access these and other videos, visit the Learning Center, log into Skillsoft and Books 24x7 with your ACM member credentials, then browse by IT and Technical Video Topics. See the videos page for more video listings.

Member Discount on EMC Courseware

ACM has partnered with EMC to bring members a 15% discount on practical training in some of today's most vital IT knowledge areas, such as Big Data, Cloud Computing, Information Storage and Management, Virtualization, and more. These EMC courses focus on technology, not products, to teach technology topics applicable to any vendor environment. Training is available in various modalities, including eLearning, instructor-led (ILT), online ILT, video ILT, and video ILT-stream. For the list of eligible courses and the discount code, visit the EMC courses 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.

CSTA JOB BOARD

Computer Science Teachers Association Job Board Matches Job Seekers, Employers

The Computer Science Teachers Association's CSTA Job Board is the career hub for K-12 Computer Science teachers. The career center provides access to 100% computer science K-12 teaching-related job postings.

The CSTA Job Board will allow you to manage your career:

Search and apply to K-12 computer science related jobs
Upload your anonymous résumé and allow employers to contact you
Set up job alerts specifying your skills, interests, and location to receive email notifications when a job is posted that matches your criteria

or recruit for open positions:

put job openings in front of the most qualified group of K-12 computer science-focused professionals
Simply create an employer account on the CSTA Job Board and choose from three levels of online job postings options: Basic 30-Day Online Job Posting ($190); Enhanced 30-Day Online Posting ($250); or Premium 30-Day Online Posting ($310).

CSTA Members: be sure to visit the CSTA Job Board directly (or click the Job Board link from the CSTA homepage) to create and upload your résumé to the Résumé Bank so that employers find you, or keep it private and use it when applying online for jobs. Log in and post your résumé today!

EDUCATION

ACM to Support Tech Camp for Girls in Africa

ACM and IEEE-CS are helping to fund an effort supported by organizations including the Peace Corps and IBM to support a computer technology camp for young women in Rwanda, an African country where many of them have little or no exposure to technology. Camp TechKobwa encourages young women to become active citizens by building their self-esteem, confidence, and skills, and empowers them to start technology clubs with their ICT teachers upon return to their schools. For a week in August, girls from a dozen schools throughout Rwanda will be hosted for a week of learning and fun; prior to arrival of the students their schools' ICT teachers will undergo technical skills training.

A partnership between Peace Corps, Michigan State University, IBM, the Ministry of Youth and ICT, and other organizations, TechKobwa is completely free of charge to every participant. Food, lodging, and transportation fees are provided. Teaching and supervision are provided by Peace Corps Volunteers, MSU faculty and students, ICT Teachers, and Rwandan science and technology mentors.

At last year's camp, Laura Dillon, an MSU computer science and engineering professor and a member of ACM-W, led a seven-person US-based team that traveled to Rwanda to train 12 teachers in the curriculum. ACM-W intends additional future efforts to support African women in computing, following its involvement with TechKobwa. Kobwa (roughly pronounced "kobga") is the Kinyarwandan word for "girl."

Microsoft Research Faculty Summit to Be Streamed Live, July 8 to 9

Join ACM for broadcasts from the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit streamed live from Redmond, Washington on Wednesday, July 8 and Thursday, July 9. This free online event offers keynotes and selected presentations from the Faculty Summit on future trends in computer science research. This year's event, which focuses on AI, will feature three keynote speakers and a panel:

July 8:

Opening Keynote 8:30–9:15 A.M. PT (11:30 A.M.–12:15 P.M. ET): Jeannette Wing, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research
Panel: Progress in AI: Myths, Realities and Aspirations 9:15–10:15 A.M. PT (12:15–1:15 P.M. ET). Moderator: Eric Horvitz, Managing Director, Microsoft Research

July 9:

Keynote: A Revolution Against Big-Brother Social Networks 9:00–9:45 A.M. PT (12:00–12:45 P.M. ET): Monica Lam, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
Closing Keynote 4:30–5:30 P.M. PT (7:30–8:30 P.M. ET): Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research

STUDENT NEWS

Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions: Submission Deadlines

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 2015. The next conferences accepting submissions are:

SPLASH 2015, October 25-30, deadline June 30
MODELS 2015, September 27-October 2, deadline July 17
SC 2015, November 15-20, deadline July 31
PACT 2015, October 18-21, deadline August 10
SAC 2016, April 4-8, 2016, deadline September 11

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) provides support for women undergraduate or graduate students in computer science and related programs who wish to attend research conferences. This exposure to the computer science research world can encourage a student to continue on to the next level (Undergraduate to Graduate, Masters to Ph.D., Ph.D. to an industry or academic position). The student does not have to present a paper at the conference she attends. Students can apply an unlimited number of times; however, once a student receives an award, she is no longer eligible for future ACM-W scholarships.

The ACM-W scholarships are divided between scholarships of up to $600 for intra-continental conference travel, and scholarships of up to $1200 for intercontinental conference travel. Scholarship applications are evaluated in six groups each year, in order to distribute awards across a range of conferences.

ACM-W encourages the student's home department to match the scholarship award and recognize the student's achievement locally within their department. In addition, if the award is for attendance at one of several ACM Special Interest Group conferences (SIGACCESS, SIGACT, SIGARCH, SIGCOMM, SIGCHI, SIGCSE, SIGDA, SIGECOM, SIGEVO, SIGGRAPH, SIGHPC, SIGIR, SIGITE, SIGMM, SIGMOBILE, SIGOPS, SIGPLAN, and SIGSOFT), the SIG will provide complimentary conference registration and a mentor during the conference. The number of free registrations available varies from SIG to SIG. The 2013-2014 scholarships are made possible by generous support from Google.

For application form, notification dates and more information, please visit the scholarships page.

Graduating Students Eligible for Special Transition Rate

ACM offers a special ACM Professional Membership for $49 USD (regularly $99) to help graduating students make the transition to professional careers, and take advantage of continuous learning opportunities, including free online books and courses and access to ACM's Career & Job Center. This one-year-only transition rate includes all the benefits of Professional Membership plus the option of purchasing a Digital Library subscription for $50. Recent graduates can access this special transition offer through ACM's convenient online renewal form, or by following the instructions on the paper renewal form. For more information, visit the Reasons to Transition to Professional Membership page.

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS PROGRAM

Featured ACM Distinguished Speaker: Vibeke Sorensen

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 Vibeke Sorensen. Vibeke is Professor and Chair of the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She is an artist working in digital multimedia and computer animation, interactive architectural installation, and visual music performance. Her work in experimental new media spans three decades and has been published and exhibited worldwide, including in books, galleries, museums, conferences, performances, film festivals, on cable and broadcast television, and the internet. She has collaborated with scientists in developing new technologies, including at California Institute of Technology, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the Neurosciences Institute of La Jolla. She has been a consultant for Disney and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA, and her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and Intel. She was Founding Director of the Computer Animation Laboratory in the School of Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts, and also was Professor and Founding Chair of the Division of Animation and Digital Arts in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. She is a 2001 Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Film/Video/Multimedia.

For more information on Vibeke, please visit her DSP speaker information page.
Vibeke Sorensen'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 on the DVP site. Make sure you identify yourself as an ACM chapter or event.

CHAPTERS NEWS

ACM Congratulates Student Chapter Excellence Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2014-2015 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 are:

Outstanding Chapter Activities: UPES ACM Student Chapter, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Uttarakhand, India
Outstanding Community Service: University of Cincinnati ACM-W Student Chapter
Outstanding Website: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana ACM Student Chapter, Bogotá, Colombia
Outstanding Recruitment Program: University of Karachi ACM Student Chapter, Pakistan
Outstanding School Service: University of Tehran ACM Student Chapter, Iran

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 14 to June 9, 2015:

ACM Student Chapters:

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki ACM-W Student Chapter, Thessaloniki, Greece
Hofstra University ACM-W Student Chapter, Hempstead, New York
Illinois Institute of Technology ACM Student Chapter, Chicago
NMAMIT ACM Student Chapter, Nitte Mahalinga Adyanthaya Memorial Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India
SWUST ACM Student Chapter, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China
UESTC ACM Student Chapter, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu
UPES ACM-W Student Chapter, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India
Youngstown State University ACM-W Student Chapter, Youngstown, Ohio

ACM Professional Chapter:

NUCES ACM Chapter, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan

ACM-W NEWS

Celebrations in Kentucky and Indiana Provide Supportive Environment for Women in CS

InWIC 2015
By Dawn D. Laux and Alka R. Harriger (Purdue University)

The 2015 Indiana Celebration of Women in Computing (InWIC) was held at the Marten House and Lilly Conference Center in Indianapolis March 6 and 7. Despite a direct conflict with SIGCSE 2015, INWIC had over 100 attendees. Undergraduate and graduate student proposals for seven lightning talks and 18 posters gave everyone an opportunity to see the impressive work of our female students across Indiana. The presentations were broken into four categories based on whether the student was a graduate or undergraduate and whether it was a poster or lightning talk. Each of the four winners received an iPad mini that was graciously donated by our platinum sponsor USAA. Keynote talks addressed confidence and work/life balance. This was the first time INWIC was held as an annual event, and there are plans to move the event to fall 2016 based on feedback.

KYCC-WiC 2015
By Melanie G. Williamson (Kentucky Community and Technical College System)

The Kentucky Community Colleges—Women in Computing Celebraton (KYCC-WiC) was held April 10 and 11 at Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC) in Lexington. This year's conference welcomed 44 faculty members, 21 business and industry representatives, and 37 students. KYCC-WiC attendees enjoyed national speakers from ACM-W and Microsoft Research and participated in informational and technical sessions. Among the keynotes were Sharon Gillett, Principal Networking Policy Strategist at Microsoft, and Rama Lohani-Chase, professor of Psychology/Sociology at Union County College, New Jersey. A panel on the Impostor Syndrome included ACM-W Council member and ACM Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges Chair Elizabeth Hawthorne; Lynne Miller, Software Staff, Integrated Defense Systems at Raytheon; Ashley Wilson Co-founder, LexLadiesCode.org; and Amy Smereck, Director of Marketing at DMD Data Systems.

ACM-W Celebrations are local events that showcase female role models, encourage mentoring and networking, supply accurate information about computing careers, and create opportunities for women to present their research, often for the first time in their careers. Many of the ACM-W Celebration events include poster competitions for undergraduate and graduate students to present their research and project work. You can find information on starting new Celebrations and conference planning resources on the ACM-W Celebrations site. Please contact Jodi Tims for any additional assistance.

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.

Also read the ACM-W Connections newsletter for updates on ACM-W programs: local celebrations, scholarships and awards, chapters, and more.

PUBLICATIONS NEWS

ACM Supports ORCID, a Global Registry to Standardize Author/Researcher Profiles

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) aims to solve the name ambiguity problem in research and scholarly communication by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism to other current researcher ID schemes. These identifiers, and the relationships among them, can be linked to the researcher's output to enhance the scientific discovery process and to improve the efficiency of research funding and collaboration.

ORCID incorporated in August 2010. ACM was deeply involved in its formation and immediately became a Founding Gold Sponsor.

"The purpose of ORCID is to ensure that all researcher activities and output are properly attributed, and to eliminate the ambiguity resulting from attribution by names which are not unique and which sometimes change," says ACM Director of Publications Bernard Rous, an ORCID board member.

There are many author profiling systems that attempt to do this, but they are all "silo" systems using identifiers which are unique only within their own space. The ORCID Registry provides an ID that can be used to tie together all other systems if they integrate with it and use it.

ACM authors are now asked to register and include their ORCID ID on their submitted manuscripts, since the ACM Author Profile ID by itself is not meaningful outside the ACM Digital Library and does not connect to other author profiling systems. DOI/ORCID ID pairs are then stored in ACM's database, and then deposited in CrossRef (and soon in ORCID as well). As all publishers begin to follow this practice, a means is provided for authors with ORCID IDs to have their publication records automatically updated and tied in with their other contributions to the field. Funding bodies are also beginning to require ORCID, enabling a path for the ORCID record to tie to Grants Received, as well as published results.

Over 1.2 million researchers around the world have obtained an ORCID since the Registry was launched in August 2012. Today a number of national governments and funding agencies are moving toward requiring ORCID registration for researchers whom they fund.

In April of this year ORCID received a $3 million grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust to develop the infrastructure and capacity to support international adoption and technical integration. Many universities are starting to integrate their faculty systems with ORCID, and Italy and the UK have begun to implement ORCID nationwide.

"It is an ambitious global project and it has every chance of success in creating a really new infrastructure for scholarship that automatically and accurately ties all the contributions of a researcher together," says Rous.

ACM Publications Seeking New Editors-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due July 1.

Journal of the ACM (JACM) is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due July 1.

ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC) is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due July 15.

ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM) is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due July 24.

ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems and ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems Accepting Submissions

The new ACM journal ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (TOMPECS) is now accepting submissions. Visit the submissions site for more information.

The new ACM journal ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS) is now accepting submissions. Visit the submissions site for more information.

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 for a segment of the information systems area. Please see the Information Systems Category Editor search page for more information.

ACM Queue Presents: Hadoop Superlinear Scalability

While exploring issues in parallel performance, Neil Gunther, Paul Puglia, and Kristofer Tomasette explain in their article for ACM Queue that "superlinear speedup is a bona fide, measurable phenomenon that can be expected to appear more frequently in practice as new applications are deployed onto distributed architectures. As demonstrated here using Hadoop MapReduce, however, USL [Universal Scalability Law] is not only capable of accommodating superlinear speedup in a surprisingly simple way, it reveals that superlinearity, although alluring, is as illusory as perpetual motion."

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ACM IN THE NEWS

"Nothing cryptic: Israeli scientist works to simplify information security"

JNS.org, June 24, 2015
2014 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in Computing Sciences recipient Dan Boneh talks about ensuring security and privacy for mobile phone users, PDF document sharers, and others.

"When to Keep Fitness Goals a Secret"

The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2015
Proceedings paper from CHI 2015 showed that people who used Facebook were less likely to set fitness goals in the first place than others who kept their commitments to themselves.

"Longstanding Problem Put to Rest"

MIT News, June 10, 2015
In their paper for the STOC 2015 conference, MIT researcher Piotr Indyk (who, along with Andrei Broder and Moses S. Charikar, received the 2012 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award) and MIT student Arturs Backurs demonstrate that if it is possible to solve the edit-distance problem in less-than-quadratic time, then it is possible to solve an NP-complete problem in less-than-exponential time.

"Microsoft Algorithm Improves Directions in Large Networks for Bing Maps"

EurekAlert, June 9, 2015
Microsoft researchers say Customizable Route Planning more accurately estimates the time needed for turns, U-turns, road closures, and traffic jams. The research leveraged a classic algorithm by 1972 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Edsger Dijkstra.

"Closing the Computer Science Gender Gap: How One Woman Is Making a Difference in Many Lives"

The Conversation, June 8, 2015
Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College and former president of ACM, says the decline of women's participation in computer science (CS) can be reversed.

"Code.org Inks 11 New Partnerships to Help Expand Computer Science Education"

GeekWire, June 3, 2015
Code.org this week announced 11 new partnerships with organizations dedicated to helping the computer science education advocate reach even more schools than it could on its own. (ACM is a partner of Code.org.)