ACM MemberNet - November 26, 2019

Welcome to the November 2019 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 past issues of MemberNet online at https://www.acm.org/membership/acm-membernet-archive.

Read coverage of ACM in the news media.

November 26, 2019

TOP STORIES

AWARDS

MEMBER RECOGNITION

SIG AWARDS

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

PUBLIC POLICY

MEMBER PROGRAMS

ACM CAREER & JOB CENTER

STUDENT NEWS

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS PROGRAM

CHAPTERS NEWS

ACM-W NEWS

PUBLICATIONS NEWS

TOP STORIES

Organize an Hour of Code in Your Community During Computer Science Education Week, December 9-15

The Hour of Code has introduced over 800 million students in more than 180 countries to computer science. ACM (a partner of Code.org, a coalition of organizations dedicated to expanding participation in computer science) encourages you to host an Hour of Code in your community and give students an opportunity to gain the skills needed for creating technology that’s changing the world.

Now in its fifth year, the Hour of Code is a global movement designed to generate excitement in young people about programming and technology. Games, tutorials, and other events are organized by local volunteers from schools, research institutions, and other groups during Computer Science Education Week, December 9-15.

Anyone, anywhere can organize an Hour of Code event, and anyone from ages 4 to 104 can try the one-hour tutorials, which are available in more than 45 languages. Learn more about how to teach an Hour of Code and how to promote your event. Tweet about it at #HourOfCode.

2020 ACM General Election Slate

In accordance with the Constitution and Bylaws of the ACM, the Nominating Committee hereby submits the following slate of nominees for ACM's officers. In addition to the officers of the ACM, five Members at Large will be elected.

The Constitution and Bylaws provide that candidates for elected offices of the ACM may also be nominated by petition of one percent of the Members who as of 1 November 2019 are eligible to vote for the nominee. Such petitions must be accompanied by a written declaration that the nominee is willing to stand for election. The number of Member signatures required for the offices of President, Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer and Members at Large, is 739.

The Bylaws provide that such petitions must reach the Elections Committee before 31 January 2020. Original petitions for ACM offices are to be submitted to the ACM Elections Committee, c/o Pat Ryan, COO, ACM Headquarters, 1601 Broadway, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10019, USA, by 31 January. Duplicate copies of the petitions should also be sent to the Chair of the Elections Committee, Gerry Segal, c/o ACM Headquarters. Statements and biographical sketches of all candidates will appear in the May 2020 issue of Communications of the ACM.

View the candidate slate.

AWARDS

2019 ACM Gordon Bell Prize Awarded to ETH Zurich Team for Developing Simulation that Maps Heat in Transistors

ACM has named a six-member team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich recipients of the 2019 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for their project, “A Data-Centric Approach to Extreme-Scale Ab initio Dissipative Quantum Transport Simulations.” The ETH Zurich team introduced DaCe OMEN, a new framework for simulating the transport of electrical signals through nanoscale materials (such as the silicon atoms used in transistors). The award was presented by ACM President Cherri M. Pancake and Arndt Bode, Chair of the 2019 Gordon Bell Prize Award Committee, during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC19) in Denver, Colorado.
Read the ACM news release.

ACM Award Nomination Submission Procedures

Each year, ACM recognizes technical and professional achievements within the computing and information technology community through its celebrated Awards Program. ACM welcomes nominations for candidates whose work exemplifies the best and most influential contributions to our community, and society at large. ACM's award committees evaluate the contributions of candidates for various awards that span a spectrum of professional and technological accomplishments. For awards presented at the annual June banquet, the deadline for nominations is January 15, 2020.

Please take a moment to consider those individuals in your community who may be suitable for nomination. Refer to the award nominations page for nomination guidelines and the complete listing of Award Subcommittee Chairs and Members.

Communications of the ACM Article on Award Nominations by ACM President Cherri Pancake

In her article for the August issue of CACM, Dispelling Common Myths about ACM Awards and Honors, ACM President Cherri Pancake shares her insights on what elements make nominations effective. Pancake is a former ACM Awards Committee Chair.

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. Nominations are accepted on a quarterly basis. The deadline for nominations is December 3.

SIG AWARDS

ACM SIG Awards Recognize Achievements in Diverse Fields

ACM's Special Interest Groups (SIGs) regularly cite outstanding individuals for their contributions in more than 35 distinct technological fields. Some awards presented (or to be presented) at recent conferences:

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

Middleware 2019, December 9 to 13, Davis, California

The ACM/IFIP Middleware Conference is a major forum for the discussion of innovations and recent scientific advances of middleware systems. Workshops on Distributed Infrastructures for Deep Learning; Scalable and Resilient Infrastructures for Distributed Ledgers; Serverless Computing; and more will be included. Keynote speakers are Brian Cooper (Google), Monica Lam (Stanford University) and Ion Stoica (UC Berkeley).

ACMMM Asia 2019, December 16 to 18, Beijing, China

The first ACM Multimedia Asia conference is a newly established international conference to showcase the scientific achievements and industrial innovations in the multimedia field. The program includes technical sessions covering all aspects of multimedia in oral and poster presentations, tutorials, panels, demonstrations, workshops, doctoral symposium and grand challenge competitions, including a multimodal video recognition challenge.

PUBLIC POLICY

Amicus Brief Latest in Long Line of USTPC Election Security Law, Policy Contributions

By Adam Eisgrau, ACM Director of Global Policy and Public Affairs

For close to 20 years, ACM's US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC) and its forerunners have raised concerns with policymakers and election officials regarding the security of election technologies and practices.

The Committee, for example, has addressed the vulnerabilities of voting technologies to hacking (hardware as well as code); the risks of vote and voter data breaches during transmission over insecure networks; the critical need to be able to verify all votes cast; the importance of securing voter registration databases; and strengthening guidelines and standards for election security. Most recently, USTPC filed an Amicus Brief with the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Judicial Circuit in support of a suit from citizens of Shelby County, Tennessee to require the County to provide voters with auditable paper ballots and cease use of its unacceptably error-prone paperless electronic voting equipment.

Members of the Committee also have contributed individually to understanding of this critical set of issues. Committee founder (and Verified Voting board member) Barbara Simons recently was named Chair of the Election Security Committee of the US Election Assistance Commission. Simons, USTPC member Ed Felten, and ACM Technology Policy Council member Latanya Sweeney all have testified in front of Congress, and USTPC Vice Chair Jeremy Epstein both co-authored a report on the dangers of email and internet voting for the Committee and personally penned a recent OpEd published in The Hill.

When it comes to preserving the security of America's elections, policymakers have never needed the expertise of ACM's members more. Revelations that our last presidential campaign was indeed breached by foreign agents has raised the profile and urgency of these issues dramatically. New funding has been allocated by Congress for states to upgrade voting technologies and equipment. Legislation has been proposed to establish standards and regulations, and court cases have been brought to determine whether voters' rights have been infringed

There is, however, much more work to be done. If you have the expertise to help ACM's efforts to enhance election security, or contribute to other current technology policy issues, please email Adam Eisgrau, Director of Global Policy and Public Affairs, or visit the Get Involved page.

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 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.

Did you know that you could potentially save thousands by refinancing your student loans? ACM has partnered with Credible to help you find out if you are overpaying and could save thousands by refinancing. As a multi-lender marketplace that allows borrowers to receive competitive loan offers from its vetted lenders, Credible empowers consumers to take control of their student loans. Borrowers can fill out one form, then receive and compare personalized offers from numerous lenders and choose the best offer. Reduce your rate, lower your payments, repay faster. You choose. To learn more visit Credible.com.

ACM Academic Membership Option

The ACM Academic Department Membership option allows universities and colleges to provide ACM Professional Membership to their faculty at a greatly reduced collective cost. ACM offers a membership for academic department faculty at the cost of $49 per person, more than half off the standard ACM professional membership fee of $99 per year. Through this program, each faculty member will receive all the benefits of individual professional ACM membership, including Communications of the ACM, member rates to ACM Special Interest Group conferences, member subscription rates to ACM journals, and much more. To learn more, visit the ACM Academic Department Membership page or contact Cindy Ryan.

ACM and SocialCoder Team Up for Positive Impact through Computing

You can use your technical skills for social good and offer volunteer support on software development projects to organizations who could not otherwise afford it. SocialCoder connects volunteer programmers/software developers with registered charities and helps match them to suitable projects based on their skills, experience, and the causes they care about. Learn more about ACM's partnership with SocialCoder, and how you can get involved.

ACM CAREER & JOB CENTER

ACM Career & Job Center Connects You with Career Opportunities

Connecting with the right employers in computing can be a daunting task. Thankfully, the world's leading companies, colleges and universities come to the ACM Career & Job Center to find the best candidates. By creating an account on the ACM Career and Job Center, you'll gain access to a wide range of tools to help you find the perfect job:

  • Finding a Job - Use the job search tools to find a job that matches your search criteria.
  • Create and Manage Email Alerts - Stay on top of the latest job openings. Receive an email when new jobs match your search criteria.
  • Create/Post Resumes - Get noticed by employers. Create or upload a resume with our easy-to-use tools so employer can get in touch with you.
  • View Saved Jobs - Save jobs that interest you, add notes, share with friends, and track your applies to keep on top of your job search.

For any assistance with the ACM Career and Job Center, please contact ACM's Advertising Sales Manager, Ilia Rodriguez.

STUDENT NEWS

Apply Now for 2019-2020 ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize: Deadline January 12, 2020

The ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing recognizes talented high school students in computer science. Judges will be looking for submissions that demonstrate ingenuity, complexity, relevancy, originality, and a desire to further computer science as a discipline. The application period closes January 12, 2020. Apply here.

Young Researchers: Apply for 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum, September 20-25, 2020: Deadline February 14, 2020

ACM encourages researchers and practitioners at all phases of their careers (undergrad, PhD or postdoc) to apply for the next Heidelberg Laureate Forum for a chance to personally interact with laureates of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics and computer science, including the ACM A.M. Turing Award and the ACM Prize in Computing. Applications must be submitted online at https://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/young-researchers/selection-process.html by February 14, 2020. You can also nominate a candidate (on the registration form, click on the "Register as a Nominator" button at the top; you will need to enter ACM’s organization code; please email [email protected] to request this number).

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 ASSETS 2019. The next conferences accepting submissions are:

Learn more about competitions on the SRC submissions page and SRC guidelines for students.

ACM Scholarships for Women Computing Students to Attend Research Conferences

The ACM Community of Support for Women in Computing (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). 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

About the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program

Book the speaker for your next event through the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program (DSP) and deliver compelling and insightful content to your audience. ACM will cover the cost of transportation for the speaker to travel to your event. Our program features renowned thought leaders in academia, industry and government speaking about the most important topics in the computing and IT world today. Our booking process is simple and convenient.
See ACM Distinguished Speakers in action on our flickr page.

Kristina Höök is Professor of Media Technology and Interaction Design at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden, and a senior researcher at Research Institutes of Sweden. She is Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction (TOCHI) and served as Technical Program Chair for SIGCHI 2012. Kristina is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a member of the Swedish Royal Engineering Academy.

For more information on Kristina, please visit her DSP speaker information page.
Kristina Höök's Digital Library author page

ACM, IEEE Computer Society Share Distinguished Speakers Programs

IEEE-CS and ACM are sharing 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

The Hour of Code Is Coming—Plan Events for Your Chapter During Computer Science Education Week, December 9-15

Since its launch in 2013, the Hour of Code has introduced over 800 million students in more than 180 countries to computer science. This year, with your chapter's participation, we can make it bigger and better than ever!

The Hour of Code is a global movement designed to generate excitement in young people about programming and technology. Games, tutorials, and other events are organized by local volunteers from schools, research institutions, and other groups during Computer Science Education Week, December 9-15.

Anyone, anywhere can organize an Hour of Code event, and anyone from ages 4 to 104 can try the one-hour tutorials, which are available in more than 45 languages. Learn more about how to teach an Hour of Code and how to promote your event.

We encourage your chapter to organize an Hour of Code event, and to share posts from your event to your social networks. Please be sure to use the #HourOfCode hashtag and @mention ACM in your posts so we can share them with ACM's broader audience. We're @theofficialacm on Twitter, and @AssociationForComputingMachinery on Facebook.

To mark your contribution to Hour of Code, ACM will reward each Student Chapter that participates with a pizza party (up to $150)! We'll also provide official recognition to your chapter in a special ACM Bulletin to all ACM members and in an upcoming Communications of the ACM issue.

Send us a brief description of your plans by December 4 to [email protected] and we'll follow up with guidelines for your celebration. Chapters who do not provide descriptions by December 4 will not qualify for the pizza party.

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 new chapters that were chartered October 19 to November 11, 2019:

ACM Student Chapters:

  • MNIT ACM Student Chapter, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India
  • SBPCOE Indapur ACM Student Chapter, SB Patil College of Engineering, Indapur, India
  • SSTC ACM Student Chapter, Shri Shankaracharya Technical Campus, Bhilai, India
  • SUST ACM Student Chapter, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh
  • UET ACM Student Chapter, University of Engineering and Technology, Sheikhupura, Pakistan
  • UIUC ACM-W Student Chapter, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois
  • University of Hawaii at Manoa ACM-W Student Chapter, Honolulu, Hawaii
  • UOS ACM Student Chapter, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
  • VIIT ACM Student Chapter, Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology, Pune, India

ACM Professional Chapters:

  • Amman ACM SIGCHI Chapter, Amman, Jordan
  • Chicago ACM SIGCHI Chapter, Chicago, Illinois
  • Delhi ACM SIGCHI Chapter, Gurgaon, India
  • Kharkiv ACM Chapter, Kharkiv, Ukraine
  • Rahkaar ACM Chapter, Okinawa, Japan

ACM-W NEWS

Join ACM-W's Membership Email List

Did you know that ACM-W offers a general email distribution list for its members? This ACMW-public list is a communication channel for disseminating general information about ACM-W, bulletins and upcoming events. To join the list: http://signup.acm.org/listserv_index.cfm?ln=ACM-W-PUBLIC. Also read the ACM-W Connections newsletter for updates on ACM-W programs: local celebrations, scholarships and awards, chapters, and more.

PUBLICATIONS NEWS

ACM Publications TOMPECS and TACO Seeking New Editors-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (TOMPECS): Nominations due November 30.

ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO): Nominations due December 17.

ACM Publications Welcome New Editors-in-Chief

ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) welcomes Albert Zomaya as its Editor-in-Chief. The appointment is from December 1, 2019 to November 30, 2022. Albert is Chair Professor of High Performance Computing and Networking in the School of Computer Science at the University of Sydney.

ACM Transactions on Computation Theory (TOCT) welcomes Ryan O'Donnell as its Editor-in-Chief. The appointment is from December 1, 2019 to November 30, 2022. Ryan is a Professor in the Computer Science Department (Theory Group) at Carnegie Mellon University.

New ACM Book: Computing and the National Science Foundation, 1950-2016

Computing and the National Science Foundation, 1950-2016: Building a Foundation for Modern Computing, an organizational history by Peter A. Freeman, W. Richards Adrion and William Aspray, relates the role of the National Science Foundation in the development of modern computing. Drawing upon new and existing oral histories, extensive use of NSF documents, and the experience of two of the authors as senior managers, this book describes how NSF's programmatic activities originated and evolved to become the primary source of funding for fundamental research in computing and information technologies.

New ACM Journals Accepting Submissions

ACM Digital Threats: Research and Practice (DTRAP) targets the prevention, identification, mitigation, and elimination of digital threats, aiming to bridge the gap between academic research and industry practice. It is accepting submissions on extant digital threats, rather than laboratory models of potential threats.

ACM Transactions on Data Science (TDS) includes cross-disciplinary innovative research ideas, algorithms, systems, theory and applications on data science, including data cleaning, transformation, representation, integration, indexing, modeling, analysis, visualization, and interpretation while retaining privacy, fairness, provenance, transparency, and provision of social benefit, within the context of big data.

ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (TIOT) publishes novel research contributions and experience reports in several research domains whose synergy and interrelations enable the IoT vision. TIOT focuses on system designs, end-to-end architectures, and enabling technologies, and on publishing results and insights corroborated by a strong experimental component.

ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare (HEALTH) is a multi-disciplinary journal publishing papers that have scientific and technological results pertaining to how computing is improving healthcare.

Digital Government: Research and Practice (DGOV) is an interdisciplinary journal on the potential and impact of technology on governance innovations and its transformation of public institutions.

ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing (TQC) will publish original research papers and surveys on topics in quantum computing and quantum information science. Topics can include models of quantum computing, quantum algorithms and complexity, quantum computing architecture, principles and methods of fault-tolerant quantum computation, design automation for quantum computing, quantum programming languages and systems, and more.

ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization (TELO) publishes high quality original papers in all areas of evolutionary computation and related areas such as population-based methods, Bayesian optimization, or swarm intelligence.

ACM Queue Presents: "Optimizations in C++ Compilers"

In his "practical journey", Matt Godbolt introduces some compiler and code generation concepts, and then shines a torch over a few of the very impressive feats of transformation your compilers are doing for you, with some practical demonstrations of his favorite optimizations. Optimizations in compilers continue to improve, and upcoming improvements in indirect calls and virtual function dispatch might soon lead to even faster polymorphism.

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