ACM MemberNet - May 28, 2020

Welcome to the May 2020 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.

May 28, 2020

TOP STORIES

AWARDS

MEMBER RECOGNITION

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

PUBLIC POLICY

MEMBER PROGRAMS

LEARNING CENTER

ACM CAREER & JOB CENTER

EDUCATION

STUDENT NEWS

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS PROGRAM

CHAPTERS NEWS

ACM-W NEWS

PUBLICATIONS NEWS

TOP STORIES

ACM Elects Gabriele Kotsis as President

ACM has elected Gabriele Kotsis as President for a two-year term beginning July 1. Kotsis is a Computer Science professor at Johannes Kepler University and an ACM Distinguished Member. She has organized ACM conferences and workshops, and in 2016 received an award in appreciation of her accomplishments regarding the ACM womENcourage conference series. Kotsis is a founding member of the ACM Europe Council, serving from 2008 to 2016. In 2014, she became an ACM Distinguished Member for her contributions to workload characterization for parallel and distributed systems, and for founding ACM Europe. Since 2016, she has been an elected Member-at-Large of the ACM Council.

Also elected to two-year terms were Vice President Joan Feigenbaum, Grace Murray Hopper Professor of Computer Science at Yale University and an Amazon Scholar; and Secretary/Treasurer Elisa Bertino, Samuel Conte Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University and 2019-2020 ACM Athena Lecturer.

President, Vice President and Secretary/Treasurer serve two-year terms from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022.

In addition, Members-at-Large elected to four-year terms are Nancy M. Amato, Abel Bliss Professor and Department Head of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tom Crick, Professor of Digital Education and Policy at Swansea University; Susan Dumais, Technical Fellow and Director, Microsoft Research Labs; Mehran Sahami, Professor (Teaching) and Associate Chair for Education, Stanford University; and Alejandro Saucedo, Engineering Director (Machine Learning), Seldon Technologies and Chief Scientist, Institute for Ethical AI and Machine Learning. They will serve four-year terms from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2024.

ACM Honors Computing Innovators for Advances in Research, Education and Industry

ACM has announced the recipients of three prestigious technical awards for 2019. These leaders were selected by their peers for making contributions that extend the boundaries of research, advance industry, and lay the foundation for technologies that transform society.

Paul Mockapetris is the recipient of the ACM Software System Award for development of the Domain Name System (DNS), which provides the worldwide distributed directory service that is an essential component of the functionality of the global internet.

Noga Alon, Phillip Gibbons, Yossi Matias and Mario Szegedy are recipients of the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for seminal work on the foundations of streaming algorithms and their application to large-scale data analytics.

Lydia E. Kavraki and Daphne Koller are the recipients of the ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award. Kavraki is recognized for pioneering contributions to robotic motion planning, including the invention of randomized motion planning algorithms and probabilistic roadmaps, with applications to bioinformatics and biomedicine. Koller is recognized for seminal contributions to machine learning and probabilistic models, the application of these techniques to biology and human health, and for contributions to democratizing education.

Read more.

ACM Recognizes Outstanding Service to the Field of Computing

ACM has recognized three individuals with awards for their exemplary service to the computing field. Working in diverse areas, the 2019 award recipients were selected by their peers for longstanding efforts that have strengthened the community. This year’s ACM award recipients made seminal contributions in areas including textbooks and educational tools, bibliographic resources, and advancing the computing community in India.

Mordechai Ben-Ari is the recipient of the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for his pioneering textbooks, software tools and research on learning concurrent programming, program visualization, logic, and programming languages, spanning four decades and aimed at both novices and advanced students in several subfields of computing.

Michael Ley is the recipient of the ACM Distinguished Service Award for creating, developing, and curating DBLP, an extraordinarily useful and influential online bibliographic resource that has changed the way computer scientists work.

Arati M. Dixit is the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award for contributing to the growth and diversity of ACM programs in India, especially ACM-W India.

Read more.

AWARDS

ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for HPC-Based COVID-19 Research Call for Nominations

ACM has established a special category of the ACM Gordon Bell Prize to recognize outstanding research achievements that use high performance computing (HPC) applications to understand the COVID-19 pandemic, including the understanding of its spread. The ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research will be presented in 2020 and 2021.

Recipients will be selected based on performance and innovation in their computational methods, in addition to their contributions toward understanding the nature, spread and/or treatment of the disease. Financial support of the $10,000 cash prize that accompanies the award is provided by Gordon Bell, a pioneer in high performance computing and researcher emeritus at Microsoft Research.

Recipients will be offered the opportunity to present their work at The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC 2020) and have their research published in The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications (IJHPCA).

The new COVID-19-focused award is a complement to the longstanding ACM Gordon Bell Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement in high performance computing applications. Nominations can now be submitted via an online submission form and will be accepted through October 8, 2020.

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. The nominations deadline for general ACM awards has passed. The remaining award nominations deadlines are: ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award (June 15); ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research (October 8; see related story in this issue) and Doctoral Dissertation Award (October 31).

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. And read ACM President and former ACM Awards Committee Chair Cherri Pancake's article in Communications of the ACM, "Dispelling Common Myths about ACM Awards and Honors."

MEMBER RECOGNITION

Call for ACM Senior and Distinguished 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 June 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.

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

ITiCSE 2020, June 15 to 19 (online)

The Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education will cover all aspects of educating the next generation of computer scientists, including curricula; leveraging data and analytics to improve learning; broadening participation and diversity; social and global challenges in computing education. Judy Sheard (Monash Museum of Computing History), "Simon" (University of Newcastle) and Matti Tedre (University of Eastern Finland and Stockholm University) will keynote.

MobiSys 2020, June 15 to 19 (online)

The 18th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services presents innovative and significant research on the design, implementation, usage, and evaluation of mobile computing and wireless systems, applications, and services. Marty Cooper (Paul Sabatier University—Toulouse III), Xia Zhou (Dartmouth College) and Chandra Narayanaswami (IBM Watson) will keynote.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2020, November 17 to 20, Daegu, South Korea (CFP)

The 13th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia attracts the most respected technical and creative people from all over the world who are excited by research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity, education and emerging technologies. Submissions of content are invited for several tracks; deadlines include: Emerging Technologies: June 10; Courses: June 24; Art Gallery: July 1. Visit the conference submissions website for more deadlines and information.

PUBLIC POLICY

ACM Europe Technology Policy Committee Issues Statement, Guiding Principles Regarding Contact Tracing Technology

ACM’s Europe Technology Policy Committee has issued detailed principles and practices for the development and deployment of contact tracing technologies intended to track and arrest the spread of COVID-19. Europe TPC's statement calls on governments that adopt such systems to choose "only those which, by technical and legal design: respect and protect the rights of all individuals; safeguard personal data and privacy to the highest degree technically possible; and are subject to scrutiny by the scientific community and civil society before, during and after deployment."

The Committee’s principles and practices address five critical areas of policy: technical architecture, development transparency, expert oversight, legal safeguards, and public engagement. Key recommendations include making contact tracing applications:

  • voluntary for members of the public to use (individual “opt-in”);
  • internationally interoperable;
  • subject to oversight by multidisciplinary committees of experts;
  • strictly limited in their use and data collection by clear legal safeguards; and
  • available for formal comment by the public and civil society.

Read the full statement and essential contact tracing principles and practices.
Statement in Italian
Statement in French

ACM US Technology Policy Committee Crafts New Privacy and Security Principles for Virtual Meetings

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

In late May, ACM's US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC) released a new Statement on Security and Privacy Principles for Virtual Meetings. Mindful of new global health and travel realities, the Statement observes that:
"The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly driven individuals and communities worldwide to interact over the Internet in new ways. Consequently, and with a speed rarely seen, virtual conferencing platforms have been pressed into service for new uses by large categories of users to facilitate previously non-virtual aspects of everyday life... This new reliance on virtual conferencing platforms and technology has exposed significant challenges to assuring their privacy and security..."

To help both individuals and organizations deal with these challenges, the Statement advances eight key security and privacy principles which it urges virtual conferencing platform designers, hosts, and users to adopt. These precepts are intended to greatly heighten the privacy and security not only of conference participants, but also of any transmitted or stored data.

The Statement and accompanying Principles were inspired by and derived from ACM's April 2013 Virtual Conferences: A Guide to Best Practices, produced by the ACM Presidential Task Force on What Conferences Can Do to Replace Face-to-Face Meetings, and from Security and Privacy Principles for Virtual Meetings, a white paper by USTPC members Simson Garfinkel, Jeanna Matthews, Andy Oram, Patrick Traynor and Alec Yasinsac. Matthews co-chaired the Task Force and was the lead drafter of USTPC's new Statement.

For more information about USTPC's technology policy mission and work, or to quickly and easily join the Committee without cost, please contact Adam Eisgrau, ACM's Director of Global Policy & Public Affairs, at [email protected].

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.

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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.

LEARNING CENTER

ACM Launches New ByteCast Podcast Series

ACM has released the inaugural episode of ACM ByteCast. In this new podcast series, hosts Rashmi Mohan and Jessica Bell (both members of the ACM Practitioners Board) interview researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice. In each monthly episode, guests will share their experiences, the lessons they've learned, and their own visions for the future of computing. The first episode features 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award laureates John Hennessy and David Patterson, who talk about the paths that led them to pursue computing careers, their breakthrough work on the RISC microprocessor architecture, and the future of computing architecture.

Watch June 8 TechTalk with ACM's Committee on Professional Ethics Co-chairs Gotterbarn and Wolf

Register to watch the ACM TechTalk, Leveraging the ACM Code of Ethics Against Ethical Snake Oil and Dodgy Development,, to be presented on Monday, June 8 at 12 pm ET/9 am PT by ACM Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE) Co-chairs Don Gotterbarn and Marty Wolf. Learn more about this topic on ACM's Discourse page.

Visit the TechTalks Archive for our full archive of past TechTalks.

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.

EDUCATION

Computing Curricula 2020 Call for Comments

Computing Curricula 2020 (CC2020), a joint project launched by professional computing societies including ACM, CSAB and the IEEE Computer Society, is inviting comments on their draft report. Visit the Computing Curricula 2020 page for full details and to download the report and complete the survey with your feedback. Please complete the survey by June 15.

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 CHI 2020. 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.

Letizia Jaccheri is a Professor of Computer Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. Her research interests include software engineering, entertainment computing, computational creativity, and information and communications technology-enabled social innovation. She is Chair of the Trondheim ACM-W Chapter, and is serving as Doctoral Consortium Chair for the ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC), to be held (virtually) from June 17-24.

For more information on Letizia, please visit her DSP speaker information page and read a People of ACM interview.
Letizia Jaccheri'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

ACM Congratulates Student Chapter Excellence Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2019-2020 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 2019-2020 are:

  • Outstanding Chapter Activities: BITS Pilani-Dubai ACM Student Chapter (Birla Institute of Technology and Science) and National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences ACM Student Chapter
  • Outstanding Website: UC Irvine ACM Student Chapter, University of California, Irvine
  • Outstanding Recruitment Program: University of Massachusetts Amherst ACM Student Chapter
  • Outstanding Community Service: PCCOE ACM Student Chapter, Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, Pune
  • Outstanding School Service: UCLA ACM Student Chapter, University of California, Los Angeles

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.

Notice to Chapters: Submit Your Annual Reports

ACM's fiscal year is coming to a close, which means it is time to submit your ACM Annual Report. The report is for the fiscal year 2020 (July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020) and is due by August 31, 2020. To complete the report online, you must log in with your unique chapter web account. Please note, your chapter web account is entirely separate from your personal web account and should be accessible to all officers. If you are unsure of your chapter web account or need to reset the password, please follow this link: https://www.acm.org/chapters/web-account-links.

Please also take this time to update your chapter's contact information, including your membership list (under the Chapter Members tab) and officers (under the Chapter Officers tab). You can utilize our edit features to extend memberships, update email addresses, or cancel past members who are no longer part of your chapter. Keeping your membership list current and up to date is important. It ensures that all members receive the maximum benefits they are entitled to and are kept aware of all the latest ACM happenings and resources.

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, visit: 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

New Title from ACM Books: Code Nation by Michael J. Halvorson

Code Nation: Personal Computing and the Learn to Program Movement in America is a new history of personal computing that emphasizes the technical and business challenges that software developers faced when building applications for CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and other emerging platforms. This popular history of computing explores the experiences of novice computer users, tinkerers, hackers, and power users, as well as the ideals and aspirations of leading computer scientists, engineers, eductors, and entrepreneurs.

ACM Journals TOIS, TALG Seeking New Editors-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS): Nominations due June 1.

ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG): Nominations due June 30.

New ACM Journals Accepting Submissions

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: "Kode Vicious Plays in Traffic"

Many cars today are built as distributed systems containing hundreds of CPUs that control the smallest bits of the car. These components are as complicated as operating systems, with millions of lines of code in them. According to George Neville-Neil (aka "Kode Vicious"), this poses risk as we struggle to understand multicore behavior of systems in the presence of optimizing compilers, as well as the challenges posed by distributed systems that have no access to atomic operations. The remedy is to look at the three classic design principles for any safety-critical system: simplicity, separation of concerns, and what can be stated as, "Don't talk to strangers."

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