ACM MemberNet - August 27, 2020

Welcome to the August 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.

August 27, 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

In Memoriam: Frances E. Allen

Computing pioneer Frances E. "Fran" Allen, a Fellow of ACM and IEEE and the first woman to receive ACM’s A.M. Turing Award, died on August 4 at age 88. Allen made seminal contributions to the world of computing, and was honored for her contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques. She worked at IBM for her entire 45-year career, and became its first female Fellow. She retired from IBM in 2002, and in 2007 the IBM PhD Fellowship Award was created in her honor.
Read the IBM blog post.

2020 ACM SIGGRAPH Election Results

ACM SIGGRAPH has concluded its election. View the election results and contact information for the newly-elected Directors.

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 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.

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 ACM membership within the last 10 years. The deadline for nominations is September 7.

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

Yoshua Bengio to Speak at AI for Good Global Summit September 29

The 2020 edition of the AI for Good Global Summit will be presented as a continuous digital event throughout the year, featuring weekly programming across multiple formats, platforms and time zones, including keynotes, expert webinars, project pitches, Q&As, performances, demos, interviews, networking and more. 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Yoshua Bengio will keynote on September 29, addressing machine learning challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

UbiComp 2020, September 12 to 16 (online)

The 2020 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing will feature workshops on Combining Physical and Data-driven Knowledge in Ubiquitous Computing; Continual and Multimodal Learning for Internet of Things; Mental Health and Well-Being; and more. Papers in ACM IMWUT Journal issues, a virtual Demos/Posters track, and the ISWC Design Exhibition are also part of the conference. UbiComp is collocated with the ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC).

Tapia 2020, September 16 to 19 (online)

The ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing is a premier venue to acknowledge, promote and celebrate diversity. Panels, workshops, poster sessions, networking opportunities and a career fair will bring together undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities. Colin Parris, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, GE Digital will deliver the Ken Kennedy Lecture.

HLF 2020, September 21 to 25 (online)

The 2020 Heidelberg Laureate Forum, held virtually this year, will provide an informal venue for 200 selected young researchers to exchange ideas with renowned laureates in mathematics and computer science. ACM A.M. Turing Award Laureates including Yoshua Bengio, Vint Cerf, Barbara Liskov and many more will participate. The program includes lectures, panel discussions and a poster session; a special Hot Topic session will focus on on "eHealth."

RecSys 2020, September 22 to 26 (online)

The ACM Conference on Recommender Systems will bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to present their latest results and identify new trends and challenges in providing recommendation components in a range of innovative application contexts. Filippo Menczer, professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington will deliver a keynote on "4 Reasons Why Social Media Make Us Vulnerable to Manipulation."

womENcourage 2020, September 24 to 27 (online)

womENcourage 2020 will be virtually hosted by ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan. The roster of distinguished speakers includes Gabriele Kotsis, ACM's new president; ACM-W Europe Chair Ruth Lennon; and 2020-2021 ACM Athena Lecturer Sarit Kraus. Conference participants will learn about "The Big Promise of Big Data Analytics" and explore "The Artificial Intelligence: from Algorithms to Ethics." The program also includes a career fair, hackathon, workshops and tutorials. Early registration is open through August 31.

PUBLIC POLICY

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

Opportunities for ACM's US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC) to contribute the technical expertise of its members to copyright and intellectual property policy making aren't frequent, but, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), they are regular—and consequential.

Adopted in 1998, the DMCA controversially included a prohibition—and stiff associated penalties—on the "circumvention" of any "technological protection measure" employed by a copyright owner to protect its material. Despite strenuous efforts in coalition by many in the public and private sectors at the time, including USTPC (then called USACM), the DMCA provided no exception to that sweeping prohibition for "fair use" (a longstanding exception to US copyright law) or many other non-infringing potential uses of copyrighted material, such as security research.

The law did, however, require the US Copyright Office to conduct a formal rulemaking proceeding every three years through which exceptions to the anti-circumvention prohibition (aka Section 1201) could be requested. ACM's US tech policy committee consistently has actively participated in these "triennial rulemakings." It successfully petitioned with others in 2015 for the creation of a "security research" exception to Section 1201, and in 2017, again in coalition, to streamline and liberalize the process of requesting new and renewing existing exceptions to the DMCA.

Late last month, in keeping with its long tradition of active engagement in these matters, USTPC teamed with University of Michigan professor J. Alex Halderman and the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology to jointly request that the current security research exception be extended for another three years. As this issue goes to press, USTPC's Intellectual Property Subcommittee and Secretariat are working to prepare for the next phase of the current triennial rulemaking. Petitions are due on September 3 to revise or expand existing exceptions. Stay tuned for more next month on that effort in progress.

To learn more about USTPC's past and current work on IP matters, or—better yet—to become actively involved with USTPC's work on IP and other policy matters, just email [email protected]. Membership on the Committee is easy, free and important on so many issues. Join us now!

MEMBER PROGRAMS

ACM Congratulates Our Grand Prize Winners and Top Ambassadors

ACM congratulates Divya B, an associate professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Vimal Jyothi Engineering College, Kerala, India, who won the 2019-2020 Ambassadors for ACM Grand Prize, an Apple Homepod. Winning the 2nd Grand Prize (a Fitbit Surge) was Naveen B. Jacob, a student at Federal Institute of Science and Technology and frontend developer at the Center for Cyber Innovation, Kerala, India.

ACM also recognizes our top Ambassadors for the final three months of the program year:

  • April: Yuvraj Patil
  • May: Fabio Henrique Ribeiro
  • June: Tejas Anand

These members also received gifts from ACM acknowledging their initiative in sharing the importance of ACM's valuable programs, such as career development and continuous learning, with others.

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 access to Communications of the ACM, eBooks and videos, an online courses program featuring in-demand skills and certifications, and the Digital Library, ACM offers more tools than ever to empower our members to succeed in the computing field. The Ambassador program offers opportunities to earn new prizes, rewards and bonus gifts with each referral.

Learn more about rules, recruitment tips and tools, and prizes.

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.

Take advantage of HP's best-in-class technology with the full portfolio of personal and printing systems. The HP Employee Purchase Program (EPP) offers HP consumer and commercial-grade products with every day savings up to 35% off. HP offers ACM members exclusive savings on the most innovative PCs, printers, and accessories. HP offers personalized assistance in choosing the perfect electronics for all of your personal or business needs. Visit the HP Direct Employee Purchase Program page for more information.

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 Kristian Lum

ACM ByteCast is ACM's 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 latest episode features Kristian Lum, a member of the research faculty at the University of Pennsylvania's CIS Department and a key organizer of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. The podcast is available in the ACM Learning Center.

Watch August 11 TechTalk with Anima Anandkumar on How to Create Generalizable AI

Watch the ACM TechTalk, How to Create Generalizable AI, presented on August 11 by Anima Anandkumar, Director of ML Research, NVIDIA and Bren Professor, California Institute of Technology. Learn more about this topic on ACM's Discourse page.

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

Watch September 1 TechTalk with Stephanie Wehner on Designing the Quantum Internet

Watch the ACM TechTalk, Quantum Networks: From a Physics Experiment to a Quantum Network System, to be presented on September 1 by Stephanie Wehner, Professor and Roadmap Leader in Quantum Internet and Networked Computing at QuTech at Delft University of Technology. Learn more about this topic on ACM's Discourse page.

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

ACM Issues Curricular Guidelines for IT Students Transferring between Two- and Four-Year Colleges

ACM’s Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges (ACM CCECC) recently released guidelines to help community colleges prepare IT students who continue for Bachelor’s degrees at four-year institutions. Their report, Information Technology Transfer Curricula 2020: Curriculum Guidelines for Two-Year Transfer Programs in Information Technology (IT-Transfer2020), builds on earlier ACM curricular efforts, was developed by an ACM task force comprised of faculty at two- and four-year institutions, and includes input from industry representatives with the overarching goal to ensure that IT graduates are “job ready” upon entering the workforce.
Read the ACM news release.

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 MobileSoft 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.

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.

Ramasuri Narayanam is a Senior Research Scientist at IBM Research-India. He holds a Master's degree and PhD in computer science from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His research interests are Social Media Analytics, Business Analytics, Game Theory, Graph Data Mining, Multi-Agent Decision Making, and Machine Learning. He has twice received IBM's prestigious Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for his work in social media analytics, graph mining and game theory. He is a recipient of a three-year Microsoft Research India PhD Fellowship.

For more information on Ramasuri, please visit his DSP speaker information 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 has come to a close, which means it is time to submit your ACM Annual Report for the 2020 fiscal year (July 1, 2019 - June 30, 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

ACM-W Launches New Webinar Series Celebrating Technology Leaders

By highlighting successful technical women who are leading diverse careers in the technology industry, ACM-W's new webinar series, "Celebrating Technology Leaders," aims to inform students and early-career professionals about the multitude of career options open to them. The introductory webinar on August 26 features ACM-W's Jodi Tims, Reyyan Ayfer, Amelia Cole and Bushra Anjum. They'll discuss ACM-W's work to support, celebrate and advocate for women in computing, as well as the rationale behind the new series and what viewers can expect in the coming months.
Register here.

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

ACM, SAGE Publishing to Launch New Journal, Collective Intelligence

ACM is collaborating with SAGE Publishing and Nesta on Collective Intelligence, a new open access journal, which will bring together formerly siloed communities of researchers and practitioners in areas such as computer science, economics, biology, sociology, political science, and philosophy. The online-only, gold open access journal will bring together and shape an emerging field devoted to understanding group performance in diverse systems, from adaptive matter, cellular and neural systems and animal societies to human organizations and systems of all kinds, hybrid AI human teams and nanobot swarms.
Read the ACM news release.

KAUST and ACM Sign Open Access Agreement

ACM and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have entered into a new transformative open access agreement. The agreement, which runs for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2020, covers both access to and open access publication in ACM's journals, proceedings and magazines for KAUST. This agreement represents the first transformative open access agreement for ACM with an institution in the Middle East. The new agreement expresses ACM's commitment to open access publication and its transition to become a fully open access research publisher within the next five years. ACM is extending the principles of the ACM OPEN access model to universities throughout the world.
Read the ACM news release.

New ACM Book: Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist

Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling for Linked Data, RDFS and OWL (3rd Ed.), by James Hendler, Dean Allemang, and Fabien Gandon, discusses the capabilities of linked-data and semantic web modeling languages, such as Resource Description Framework Schema and Web Ontology Language, as well as more recent standards. Examples and exercises illustrate the use of semantic web technologies in solving common modeling problems.

ACM/IMS Transactions on Data Science and ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems Seeking New Editors-in-Chief

ACM/IMS Transactions on Data Science (TDS): Nominations due August 31

ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS): Nominations due October 30

ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security Welcomes New Editor-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS) welcomes Ninghui Li as its new Editor-in-Chief for the term of October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2023. Ninghui is a Computer Science Professor at Purdue University.

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: "Data on the Outside vs. Data on the Inside"

Salesforce's Pat Helland explains how data kept outside of SQL has different characteristics from data kept inside. The article describes the impact of services and trust on the treatment of data. It introduces the notions of inside data as distinct from outside data. The article then examines the notion of reference data and its usage patterns in facilitating the interoperation of services. Finally, JSON and SQL are seen as representations of data, and their strengths are compared and contrasted. It is common practice today to use JSON to represent data on the outside and SQL to store the data on the inside.
Read the article in ACM Queue.

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