ACM MemberNet - June 25, 2020

Welcome to the June 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.

June 25, 2020

TOP STORIES

AWARDS

MEMBER RECOGNITION

SIG NEWS AND AWARDS

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

PUBLIC POLICY

MEMBER PROGRAMS

LEARNING CENTER

ACM CAREER & JOB CENTER

STUDENT NEWS

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS PROGRAM

CHAPTERS NEWS

ACM-W NEWS

PUBLICATIONS NEWS

TOP STORIES

Pioneer of Modern Datacenter Design Luiz Barroso Receives Eckert-Mauchly Award

ACM and the IEEE Computer Society have named Luiz André Barroso, Vice President of Engineering at Google, recipient of the 2020 Eckert-Mauchly Award for pioneering the design of warehouse-scale computing and driving it from concept to industry. Barroso is widely recognized as the foremost architect of the design of these new ultra-scale datacenters. The cornerstone of his architectural vision was to think of a system holistically, weaving together the individual compute, storage, and networking components into an overall design across large-scale distributed systems. Barroso was formally recognized with the ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award at the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), which was held virtually earlier this month.
Read the ACM news release.

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 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 and Fellows Nominations

The Senior Member advanced grade of membership recognizes ACM members with at least 5 years of Professional ACM membership in the last 10 years. Nominations are accepted on a quarterly basis. The deadline for nominations is September 3.

The Distinguished Member designation recognizes ACM members with at least 5 years of Professional ACM membership in the last 10 years who have demonstrated significant accomplishments or made a significant impact on the computing field. The deadline for nominations is August 1.

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. Candidates for Fellow must demonstrate a sustained level of contribution over time, with clear impact that extends well beyond their own organization, and have at least 5 years of Professional Membership within the last 10 years. The deadline for nominations is September 7.

SIG NEWS AND AWARDS

ACM Special Interest Groups 2020 Election Results

The following ACM Special Interest Groups have posted election results: SIGCAS, SIGMICRO, SIGSIM, SIGSPATIAL, and SIGUCCS. Visit the SIG Elections Results page to view the election results and contact information for the newly elected officers and board members for each SIG.

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 conferences:

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

GECCO 2020, July 8 to 12 (online)

The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference includes workshops on automated design of robots; benchmarking best practices; decomposition techniques; evolutionary and machine learning solutions; medical applications; and more. Scheduled keynoters are ACM Turing Award laureate Leslie Valiant, Kalyanmoy Deb (Michigan State University) and Darrell Whitley (Colorado State University).

EC 2020, July 13 to 17 (online)

Sponsored by ACM SIGecom, the Conference on Economics and Computation is the leading scientific conference on advances in theory, systems, and applications at the interface of economics and computation. Workshops will address mentoring; global challenges; economics of networks, systems and computation; and distortion and information-efficiency tradeoffs. Jacques Crémer (Toulouse School of Economics) and Milind Tambe (Harvard University, Google Research India) will keynote.

DAC 2020, July 20 to 24 (online)

The Design Automation Conference will cover topics from electronic design automation to design on cloud, machine learning, embedded systems and more. Workshops will cover approximate computing, neuromorphic computing, and DA for quantum. Keynoters include H-S Philip Wong (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing); Calista Redmond (RISC-V Foundation); Andrew Feldman (Cerebras Systems); and ACM Athena Lecturer Andrea Goldsmith (Stanford University).

L@S 2020, August 12 to 14 (online)

Learning@Scale investigates large-scale, technology-mediated learning environments that typically have many active learners and few experts on hand to guide their progress or respond to individual needs. Workshops will address inclusivity, testing, AI for video-based learning, chatbot development, MOOCs and more. Katie Davis (University of Washington) 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: Art Gallery: July 1; Computer Animation Festival: July 31; Doctoral Consortium: August 14. Visit the conference submissions website for more deadlines and information.

PUBLIC POLICY

ACM Europe, US Tech Policy Committees Provide Input on Pressing Issues

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

Last December, the European Commission unveiled the European Green Deal, an ambitious plan for action on climate change (summarized here and also here). This month, ACM's Europe Technology Policy Committee (Europe TPC) submitted formal comments on key aspects of that strategy to the Commission's Directorate General for Climate Action. Based on analysis by Europe TPC member Bran Knowles and her colleagues at Britain's Lancaster University, the comments endorse: a carbon tax on emissions generated in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector; strict limits on ICT greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 with a target of elimination by 2050; and capping datacenter power consumption.

June also saw submission of comments to the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) by ACM's US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC) in a long-running proceeding to modernize the EAC's Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. The VVSG are meant to provide authoritative guidance to election officials at all levels of government responsible for the security of the nation's elections. In its submission, USTPC reiterated its earlier call on the Commission to maintain, without weakening, key recommendations to assure that no part of voting systems are connectable to the internet, and that such systems are interoperable and highly inspectable. The comments also supported closing loopholes in the current Guidelines that allow voting system vendors to evade Commission scrutiny of new system designs by misclassifying them as minor modifications to old technologies. USTPC also urged the Commission to unequivocally affirm that only the Commission can determine when a system has been modified.

For more information about USTPC's technology policy mission and activities, or to join our work, please contact Adam Eisgrau, ACM's Director of Global Policy and 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.

ACM's Discounts and Special Offers Program is our way of saying "Thanks!" to our members by providing you with discounts on the goods and services you need, want and use. Save on insurance, software/hardware, careers and conferences, magazines, books and journals, travel, financial products, and general consumer products.

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 ByteCast Interviews Donald Knuth

ACM ByteCast is ACM's new series of podcast interviews with researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice. In each monthly episode, guests share their experiences, the lessons they've learned, and their own visions for the future of computing. The second episode features 1974 ACM A.M. Turing laureate Donald Knuth, who wrote the hugely popular textbook series, The Art of Computer Programming. The podcast is available in the ACM Learning Center.

Watch July 8 TechTalk with Wes McKinney on Apache Arrow

Watch the ACM TechTalk, Apache Arrow and the Future of Data Frames, to be presented on Wednesday, July 8 at 12 pm ET/9 am PT by Wes McKinney, Director of Ursa Labs. Larisa Sawyer, software engineer and Vice President at Two Sigma Investments, will moderate the Q&A session after the talk. 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.

STUDENT NEWS

ACM Student Research Competition 2020 Grand Finals Winners

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), sponsored by Microsoft, has announced its Grand Finals winners. There are two rounds of competition at each conference hosting an SRC, which culminates in a Grand Finals competition. All undergraduate and graduate student winners from the SRCs held during the year advance to the SRC Grand Finals, where they are evaluated by a different panel of judges via the Web. This year's SRC Grand Finals winners are:

Graduate Category:
First Place: Peter Li, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "A Mutual Information Accelerator for Autonomous Robot Exploration" (SIGMICRO 2019)
Second Place: James Davis, Virginia Polytechnic and State University "On the Impact and Defeat of Regex DoS" (ESEC/FSE 2019)
Third Place: Hasindu Gamaarachchi, University of New South Wales "Real-time, Portable and Lightweight Nanopore DNA Sequence Analysis Using System-on-Chip" (ESWEEK 2019)
Undergraduate Category:
First Place: Zhaowei Xi, Tsinghua University "High-performance Flexible Packet Generator Using Programmable Switching ASIC" (SIGCOMM 2019)
Second Place: Alexander Zlokapa, California Institute of Technology "A Deep Learning Approach to Noise Prediction and Circuit Optimization for Near-term Quantum Devices"(SC19)
Third Place: Ocean Hurd, University of California, Santa Cruz "Insights for More Usable Virtual Reality Games for People with Ambylopia" (ASSETS 2019)

Read the ACM news release.

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.

Michalis Vlachos is a Professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Lausanne. Previously he was with IBM Research. His interests are in the areas of data mining, big data and information retrieval. From 2011-2016 he was the scientific director for the ERC Starting grant on the topic "Exact Mining from In-Exact Data." He is a frequent presenter at the ACM conferences on Knowledge Management (CIKM) and on Data Mining (SIGKDD). He has been a member of the IBM Academy of Technology since 2018.

For more information on Michalis, please visit his DSP speaker information page.
Michalis Vlachos'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

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.

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 April 16 to June 9, 2020:

ACM Student Chapters:

  • KDK College of Engineering Nagpur ACM Student Chapter, Karmavir Dadasaheb Kannamwar College of Engineering, Nagpur, India
  • Navrachana University ACM Student Chapter, Vadodara, India
  • University of Alberta ACM Student Chapter, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

ACM Professional Chapter:

  • Accelerated Scalable Computing and Analytics ACM SIGHPC Chapter, Knoxville, Tennessee

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

Ubiquity Feature: "Machine Learning and Computational Design" by Silvio Carta

The use of computers in design is substantially different today from what it was only 30 years ago, and light-years ahead of how things were designed before computers entered the scene 60 years ago. This article in ACM's online magazine Ubiquity discusses the use of computers (more specifically, computational design) as a useful tool for designers. Herein, computational design refers to the application of computational tools to design practice.

eLearn Feature: Interview with Janet Zadina: "Applying Educational Neuroscience Research to Instruction and Elearning"

In this eLearn Magazine interview, Dr. Janet Zadina discusses her work as an educational neuroscientist bridging brain research and pedagogy. She provides insights and advice on how instructors can design more learner-centered course experiences and use online technologies more effectively through a better understanding of neuroscience research related to learning. This interview spans a range of topics including contributions of brain research to learning science, common neuromyths, emotions and learning and how the digital information environment is impacting our brains and learning.

ACM TODAES Welcomes Sharon Hu as New Editor-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES) welcomes Sharon Hu as its new Editor-in-Chief for the three-year term of June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2023. Sharon is a Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame.

ACM TALG Seeking New Editor-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG) is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are 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: "Is Persistent Memory Persistent?"

Power failures pose the most severe threat to application data integrity, and painful experience teaches that the integrity promises of failure-atomic update mechanisms can't be taken at face value. Diligent developers and operators insist on confirming integrity claims by extensive firsthand tests. In this article, Terence Kelly presents a simple and inexpensive test of failure-atomic update mechanisms, capable of subjecting storage devices, system software, and application software to 10,000 sudden whole-system power-interruption tests per week.

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