ACM MemberNet - December 22, 2020

Welcome to the December 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.

December 22, 2020

TOP STORIES

AWARDS

MEMBER RECOGNITION

SIG AWARDS

ONLINE 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

ACM Names 2020 Distinguished Members

ACM has named 64 Distinguished Members for outstanding contributions to the field. All 2020 inductees are longstanding ACM members and were selected by their peers for a range of accomplishments that have contributed to technologies that move the computing field forward.

"The active participation of ACM members, in our organization, and in the field more broadly, is the foundation of a global scientific society,” said ACM President Gabriele Kotsis. “With the Distinguished Member designation, ACM celebrates specific contributions of these members and their career growth as reflected in a long-term commitment to the field, as well as their collaboration with peers in supporting a global professional association for the benefit of all."

The 2020 ACM Distinguished Members work at leading universities, corporations and research institutions in Australia, Canada, China, India, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. These innovators have made contributions in a wide range of technical areas including data science, mobile and pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, computer science education, computer engineering, graphics, cybersecurity, and networking, among many other areas.

The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of ACM worldwide membership based on professional experience as well as significant achievements in the computing field. To be nominated, a candidate must have at least 15 years of professional experience in the computing field, five years of professional ACM membership in the last 10 years, and have achieved a significant level of accomplishment, or made a significant impact in the field of computing, computer science and/or information technology. In addition, it is expected that a Distinguished Member serves as a mentor and role model, guiding technical career development and contributing to the field beyond the norm.
Read the ACM news release.

CCF Honors ACM CEO Vicki Hanson with Honorary Membership

The China Computer Federation has bestowed honorary membership on ACM's CEO Vicki Hanson. The CCF Honorary Membership is awarded to people who are not CCF members but made great contributions to CCF, or to collaborations between CCF and other organizations. During the past 10 years of ACM's collaboration with CCF, Hanson made great efforts to strengthen their relationship, including inviting Turing Award laureates to speak at CCF events; helping to grow ACM membership in China; and, most recently, establishing a joint award for AI.

Discover the latest "ACM Selects," Shortlists of Learning Resources Curated by Experts

ACM Selects are themed shortlists curated by subject matter experts for both serious and emerging computing professionals, with the goal of providing new ways to discover relevant resources, either through ACM or authenticated by ACM-affiliated specialists. The latest Selects cover Getting Started with Cybersecurity; Getting Started with People Management; ABC for Professional Relevance in the Digital World; and Spotlight on Computing in India.

AWARDS

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.

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

Deadline for nominations for the main awards for next year is January 15, 2021.

MEMBER RECOGNITION

Call for ACM Senior Member 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 March 3, 2021.

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 conferences:

ONLINE CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

POPL 2021, January 17 to 22

The 48th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages features TutorialFest, with sessions on Haskell; Dynamic Data-Race Prediction, Iris—A Modular Foundation for Higher-Order Concurrent Separation Logic; the Intersection of Quantum Computing and Programming Languages; and more. Workshops, conferences and symposia will cover such topics as verification and model-checking; declarative languages; and partial evaluation and program manipulation.

ASP-DAC 2021, January 18 to 21

The Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference will feature many virtual sessions on various aspects of design automation. Three keynote addresses will address neuro-inspired learning (Kaushik Roy, Purdue University); microfluidic biochips (Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Duke University); and scientific applications of origami technology (Jun Mitani, University of Tsukuba).

DATE 2021, February 1 to 5

The Design, Automation and Test in Europe conference will include tutorials; a PhD forum; fringe meetings and co-located workshops; BarCamp, and informal interactive space for discussing topics; and a career fair. Friday workshops will cover Automotive Reliability and Test; System-level Design Methods for Deep Learning on Heterogeneous Architectures; Generation and Implementation of an Industry-Grade ASSP Core; Interdependent Challenges of Reliability, Security and Quality; and Autonomous Systems Design.

PUBLIC POLICY

Europe Technology Policy Committee Formally Comments on UK Data Strategy

By Adam Eisgrau, ACM Director of Global Policy and Public Affairs
This fall, the UK government launched a public consultation seeking comment on a National Data Strategy. In early December, ACM's Europe Technology Policy Committee (Europe TPC) submitted detailed comments drafted by AI Working Group Chair Alejandro Saucedo, Bran Knowles, Julie Williamson, and Europe TPC Chair Chris Hankin.

The Comments urged authorities to: maximize access to open datasets; require multidisciplinary expert review and risk assessment of data and its collection processes; and include all sectors of society in data access and design. They also afforded the opportunity to note and contextualize Europe TPC's recent Statement on Essential Principles and Practices for COVID-19 Contact Tracing Applications and Comments on the EU Climate Ambition for 2030 and for the Design of Certain Climate and Energy Policies of the European Green Deal.

No timetable for the next phase of the government's consultation has yet been announced.

By Adam Eisgrau, ACM Director of Global Policy and Public Affairs
As detailed in MemberNet's August issue, ACM's US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC) has a long history of working to protect security research from being prohibited or chilled by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). That work has taken the form of supporting an exemption for such research, renewing that exemption multiple times, and expanding the exemption (most recently in September).

This month, the Committee, guided by Law Subcommittee Chair Andy Grosso, joined J. Alex Halderman, the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, and the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic at Colorado Law to make the case that the security research exemption be liberalized further. This filing with the US Copyright Office argues that:

  • most computer security research does not implicate exclusive rights of copyright holders in underlying computer programs;
  • even when computer security research does implicate copyright, it is a non-infringing "fair use";
  • current use limitations chill the ability of security researchers to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
  • national cybersecurity concerns weigh in favor of granting the exemption; and
  • Section 1201's prohibition on circumventing access controls and the limitations in the existing exemption create many adverse effects.

The Librarian of Congress's ruling on USTPC's and its collaborators' petition is not expected until mid- to late-2021.

To contribute to the work of ACM's policy committees, simply email [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 Jennifer Widom

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 Jennifer Widom, Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering and Fletcher Jones Professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Widom was named the 2015-2016 ACM Athena Lecturer. The podcast is available in the ACM Learning Center.

Watch January 12 TechTalk with Circonus Founder Theo Schlossnagle on Time-Series Databases

Watch the ACM TechTalk, Always-On Time Series Databases, an ACM Queue Case Study Q&A to be presented on January 12 by Theo Schlossnagle, Founder and CTO, Circonus; Co-Chair, ACM Queue; and ACM Member-at-Large. Because this talk will be driven by your question(s) pertaining to the Case Study, please download and read the Case Study before attending the talk. We also invite you to submit one or more questions by typing them in the appropriate field on the registration form. Leave your comments and questions for Theo now and anytime before the live event 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

US High School Students Encouraged to Apply for 2020-2021 ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize

Every year, the ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing recognizes talented high school students in computer science. The intent of the program is to promote and encourage the field of computer science, as well as to empower young and aspiring learners to pursue computing challenges outside of the traditional classroom environment.

The application process involves a Challenge that focuses on having the student develop an artifact that engages modern computing technology and 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 18, 2021.

Up to four winners will be selected and each will be awarded a $10,000 prize, which will be administered through the financial aid department at the university the student will attend. The prizes are funded by a $1 million endowment established by David Cutler and Gordon Bell.

Detailed information, including the link to the online application, is available on the ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing website.

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 SC20. The next conferences accepting submissions are:

  • ICSE 2021, May 23-29, deadline January 4, 2021
  • CHI 2021, May 8-13, deadline January 11, 2021

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.

Marie-Paule Cani is a Professor of Computer Science at Ecole Polytechnique. She has contributed to several high-level models for shapes and motion such as implicit surfaces, multi-resolution physically-based animation methods and hybrid representations for real-time natural scenes. She has received many honors from Eurographics and other institutions, and has been the President of Eurographics since 2017. Marie-Paule was the Technical Paper Chair of SIGGRAPH 2017, and has served on the program committees of all major conferences in computer graphics, as well as on the Editorial Boards of major graphic journals.

For more information on Marie-Paule, please visit her 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

ACM Thanks Student Chapters for Participating in Hour of Code

The Hour of Code is a global movement designed to generate excitement in young people about programming and technology. Games, tutorials, and other events were organized during Computer Science Education Week around the world. ACM would like to congratulate all of the ACM Student Chapters that took part this year. View the complete list of chapters that participated.

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 November 17 to December 14, 2020:

ACM Student Chapters:

  • NJIT ACM SIGCHI Student Chapter, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark
  • University of York UK ACM Student Chapter, York, UK
  • University of York UK ACM-W Student Chapter, York, UK
  • UPC ACM Student Chapter, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Lima, Peru

ACM Professional Chapters:

  • Hanoi ACM Chapter, Hanoi, Vietnam
  • Surabaya ACM SIGCHI Chapter, Surabaya, Indonesia

ACM-W NEWS

Celebrating Technology Leaders, Episode 3: Women in UI/UX

In this third episode of ACM-W’s webinar series, “Celebrating Technology Leaders,” host Bushra Anjum will explore user-centric design and design thinking—and the multitude of career paths they open—with leading user interface and user experience design professionals. How has the UI/UX design space evolved in the last two decades? What are the various stages of the design process and how to design with a business growth mindset? Is it really possible to predict user expectations? Register here to view on demand.

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 Transactions on Quantum Computing Publishes First Issue

ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing (TQC) has published its inaugural issue, which presents a collection of five outstanding research papers that capture the breadth and sophistication of quantum computing research. These include a novel technique for decomposition of a large class of quantum circuits that can achieve a significant improvement of depth over the best-known qubit-only techniques; an efficient procedure for characterizing Pauli channels, which are an important noise model in many practical quantum computing architectures; and new quantum machine learning algorithms for training and evaluating feedforward neural networks that can be quadratically faster in the size of the network than their classical counterparts.
Read the ACM news release.

XRDS Seeking New Editor-in-Chief

ACM's flagship student publication XRDS is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due December 31, 2020.

ACM Queue Presents: "Everything VPN Is New Again"

Tailscale CTO David Crawshaw describes how the 24-year-old virtual private network has found a second wind. The concept was created for a radically different internet from the one we know today. As the internet grew and changed, so did VPN users and applications. The VPN had an awkward adolescence in the internet of the 2000s, interacting poorly with other widely-popular abstractions. In the past decade the internet has changed again, offering new uses for VPNs. The development of a radically new protocol, WireGuard, provides a technology on which to build these new VPNs.

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