ACM MemberNet - May 27, 2021

Welcome to the May 2021 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 27, 2021

TOP STORIES

AWARDS

MEMBER RECOGNITION

SIG NEWS AND EVENTS

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

Ayanna Howard Named 2021-2022 ACM Athena Lecturer

ACM has named Ayanna Howard, dean of The Ohio State University College of Engineering, as the 2021-2022 Athena Lecturer. Howard is recognized for fundamental contributions to the development of accessible human-robotic systems and artificial intelligence, along with forging new paths to broaden participation in computing through entrepreneurial and mentoring efforts. Her contributions span theoretical foundations, experimental evaluation, and practical applications.

Howard is the Dean of the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University. She is the first woman to lead the College of Engineering at Ohio State. She is also founder and President of the Board of Directors of Zyrobotics, a company that develops mobile therapy and educational products for children with special needs.

“Ayanna Howard is a trailblazer in vital research areas, including topics such as trust and bias in AI, which will continue to be front-and-center in society in the coming years,” said ACM President Gabriele Kotsis. “The quality of her research has made her a thought leader in developing accessible human-robot interaction systems. Both as an entrepreneur and mentor, Ayanna Howard has worked to increase the participation of women and underrepresented groups in computing. For all these reasons, she is precisely the kind of leader ACM seeks to recognize with the Athena Lecturer Award.”

Initiated in 2006, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. The award carries a cash prize of $25,000, with financial support provided by Two Sigma. The Athena Lecturer gives an invited talk at a major ACM conference of her choice.

Read the ACM news release.

ACM Honors Computing Innovators for Advances in Communications, Theoretical Computer Science, and Software Systems

ACM has announced the recipients of four prestigious technical awards for 2020. 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.

Shyamnath Gollakota is the recipient of the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for contributions to the use of wireless signals in creating novel applications, including battery-free communications, health monitoring, gesture recognition, and bio-based wireless sensing.

Margo Seltzer, Michael Allen Olson, and Keith Bostic are the recipients of the ACM Software System Award for Berkeley DB, which was an early exemplar of the NoSQL movement and pioneered the "dual-license" approach to software licensing.

Yossi Azar, Andrei Broder, Anna Karlin, Michael Mitzenmacher, and Eli Upfal are the recipients of the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for the discovery and analysis of balanced allocations, known as the power of two choices, and their extensive applications to practice.

Hector Levesque and Moshe Vardi are the recipients of the ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award. Levesque is recognized for fundamental contributions to knowledge representation and reasoning, and their broader influence within theoretical computer science, databases, robotics, and the study of Boolean satisfiability. Vardi is cited for contributions to the development of logic as a unifying foundational framework and a tool for modeling computational systems.

Read more.

ACM Focus, a New Way to Explore and Interact with ACM Content

ACM Focus is a new way to explore the breadth and variety of ACM content, and to stay current with the latest trends in your technical community. ACM Focus consists of a set of AI-curated custom feeds by subject, each serving up a focused set of the latest relevant ACM content. These high-level subject-based feeds of original and curated content provide overall awareness of relevant ACM activities, people, talks and a variety of published works. Current topic areas are Artificial Intelligence; Information Systems; the Web; Society and the Computing Profession; Applied Computing; Graphics and Computer-Aided Design; Networks and Communications; Architecture; Hardware; Human-Computer Interaction; Security and Privacy; Software Engineering and Programming Languages; and Computational Theory. The feeds are built in an automated fashion and are refined as the user interacts with them.

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 HPC and Getting Started with Data Science #2.

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."

The deadline for nominations for the main awards has passed. Other deadlines: ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award, June 1.

MEMBER RECOGNITION

Call for ACM Senior and Distinguished 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 June 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.

SIG NEWS AND EVENTS

Upcoming Online SIG Events

  • SIGCAS: COMPASS 2021, June 28 to July 2: Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies
  • SIGEnergy: e-Energy 2021, June 28 to July 2: Conference on Future Energy Systems
  • SIGLOG: ACM/IEEE LICS 2021, June 29 to July 2: Symposium on Logic in Computer Science
  • SIGMIS: CPR 2021, June 30: Computers and People Research Conference

ONLINE CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

ACM/IEEE Presidential Panel on the Future of Computing, May 6 (video recording)

Watch a recording of the May 6 panel that discussed the computing profession's state in the world today and its future outlook. Panelists included ACM President Gabriele Kotsis; ACM Turing Award Laureate Barbara Liskov; ACM Fellows Nuria Oliver and Ricardo Baeza-Yates; and Communications of the ACM Senior Editor Moshe Y. Vardi.

Deepfakes, Disinformation and Democracy Conference, June 2

ACM's US Technology Policy Committee is joining with the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and the Online News Association to bring together key stakeholders, experts, and thought leaders to discuss the future of deepfakes, disinformation, and democracy in a half-day virtual policy conference. Joining the international roster of speakers will be ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate and Google VP and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf. Register to watch on Wednesday, June 2 from 1 to 4 PM EDT.

ISCA 2021, June 14 to 19

The International Symposium on Computer Architecture is the premier forum for new ideas and research results in computer architecture. Workshops will cover such topics as DRAM security, environmental responsibility, and real-world applications. Hillery Hunter (IBM), Monica Lam (Stanford University) and Pradeep Dubey (State University of New York, Stony Brook) will keynote.

SIGMOD/PODS 2021, June 20 to 25

The International Conference on Management of Data is a leading international forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences. Workshops will cover Big Data in Emergent Distributed Environments; Exploiting AI for Data Management; Data Management for End-to-End Machine Learning; Data Management on New Hardware; and Graph Data Management and Systems and Network Data Analytics.

PLDI 2021, June 20 to 26

PLDI is the premier forum in programming languages and programming systems research, covering design, implementation, theory, applications, and performance. Co-located conferences will cover history of programming languages, memory management, and languages, compilers, tools and theory of embedded systems. Workshops will address array-oriented programming; programming languages for quantum computing; state of the art in program analysis; and more.

WebSci 2021, June 21 to 25

The 13th ACM Conference on Web Science will explore "Globalisation, Inclusion and the Web in the Context of COVID," in recognition of the divides that still exist and emerge in various online environments. Keynote speakers are Deen Freelon (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); entrepreneur and internet activist Martha Lane Fox; Matthew S. Weber (Rutgers University); Daniel J. Weitzner (MIT); and Jennifer Zhu Scott (The Commons Project).

STOC 2021, June 21 to 25

The 53rd ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing will be part of a five-day TheoryFest with an expanded program of papers and poster sessions, as well as invited talks, tutorials and workshops spotlighting clustering, robust streaming, sketching and sampling, and women in the field. Keynote speakers are 2020 ACM Turing Award laureate Alfred Aho (Columbia University) John Martinis (Silicon Quantum Computing and UC Santa Barbara), Kobbi Nissim (Georgetown University), and Toniann Pitassi (University of Toronto).

IDC 2021, June 24 to 30

ACM Interaction Design and Children is an international conference for researchers, educators and practitioners to share ideas on inclusive child-centered design, learning and interaction. Workshops will address accessible AI, justice-centered design, and more. Courses will cover sonic interfaces, the CCI UX Playbook, and more. Jenny Radesky (University of Michigan) will deliver the keynote, on "Moving Beyond 'Screen Time': Advocating for a Child-Centered Digital Environment."

PUBLIC POLICY

ACM Policy Groups Gear Up for Summer Projects

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

As the weather heats up worldwide, so too are the project calendars of ACM’s Technology Policy Council (TPC), and its Europe and US Technology Policy Committees (Europe TPC and USTPC, respectively).

The Council continues its work toward the Fall launch of TechBriefs series, a new regular series of substantive and well-researched brief “backgrounders” for policymakers on key issues, such as facial recognition, with computing at their core. The Council also is constituting an international task force on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, chaired by ACM Fellow and leading expert Stuart Russell, and is collaborating with the Future of Computing Academy’s task force on Remote Wellness in Early Career Professionals. Both groups intend to produce detailed white papers.

For Europe TPC, late July deadlines are approaching to submit comments to the European Parliament on new AI legislation, and to the European Commission concerning (in its words) “the design of a legal framework for a European Health Data Space.” The Commission also is seeking public comments by very early September in its consultation on European Digital Principles as part of its Digital Compass initiatives.

Finally, USTPC is actively recruiting members for two new task forces. One will explore input to policymakers on digital health technology issues. The other seeks to develop modernized principles for governments on how to make their public web-based interfaces more “citizen-centric” and effective at engaging the public. The Committee also is finalizing its next HotTopics webinar program, "The Politics and Policy of Necessity: Mega-Hacks and the Future of US Cybersecurity," to be held in early June.

There’s no better time than now for you to contribute to one or more of these efforts. To learn more, please email Adam Eisgrau, Director of Global Policy and Public Affairs for ACM, 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.

FreshBooks is accounting software designed exclusively for freelancers and growing service-based business owners. Automate invoicing, organize expenses, track time and accept credit cards online with just a few clicks. FreshBooks helps you grow your business, gets you paid two times faster and keeps you and your team organized, efficient and collaborative. Through our partnership with FreshBooks, ACM members can now get two months free.

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 Suchi Saria

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 Suchi Saria, John C. Malone Associate Professor of Machine Learning and Healthcare at Johns Hopkins University.

Watch ACM TechTalk on Horizontal Leadership with Eve Andersson

Watch the ACM TechTalk, Horizontal Leadership: Practical Lessons for Driving Company-Wide Strategy and Action, presented on May 20 by Eve Andersson, Senior Director, Accessibility, at Google, and a member of the ACM Practitioner Board. Learn more about this topic by visiting 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 Presents Special Awards to Regeneron Science Fair Finalists

ACM presented Special Awards to finalists in the 2021 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world's largest high school science research competition, held virtually May 16-21, 2021. Nearly 2,000 high school students competed to reach the finals. Each year, organizations representing government, industry and education across a wide variety of scientific disciplines serve as Special Award Sponsors, providing awards, scholarships, internships and other prizes to student finalists.

In addition to monetary prizes, ACM also provides complimentary ACM Student Lite Memberships for the duration of the award recipients’ undergraduate education. This includes subscriptions to XRDS (Crossroads), an online edition of Communications of the ACM, and full access to the ACM Digital Library. The 2021 winners are:

First Award of $4,000

  • Fusing LiDAR and Camera Data for Advanced Context Recognition in Autonomous Navigation Sensory Systems through Multidimensional Deep Neural Network Architectures, Emily SIhan Zhang, Cherry Creek High School, Englewood, Colorado, US

Second Award of $3,000

  • A Novel Method of Creating Block Ciphers Provably Immune to Linear and Differential Cryptanalysis, Szymon Perlicki, Szkola Podstawowa, Wroclaw, Poland

Third Award of $1,500

  • Development of an AI-Powered Powered Facial-cue Control Module, Daniel Shen, William G. Enloe High School, Cary, North Carolina, US

Fourth Award of $500

  • Limited Query Black-box Adversarial Attacks in the Real World, Hristo Todorov, High School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Kyustendil, Bulgaria
  • Towards a Greener AI: Structured Pruning of Convolutional Neural Networks at Initialization, Sydney Faux, Pace Academy, Atlanta, GA, US
  • A Hash Algorithm for Directory Tree, Linzhou Jiang, Chengdu No. 7 High School, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

See the full list of winners and watch a recording of ACM's contribution to the 2021 ISEF Special Awards ceremony.

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 SIGCSE 2021. 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.

Sebastian Fischmeister is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He performs systems research at the intersection of software technology, distributed systems, and formal methods. His preferred application area is in safety-critical embedded real-time systems in the domain of automotive systems, aerospace, and medical devices. Key highlights of his research include a framework for Real-time Ethernet, a dynamic binary instrumentation tool for time-aware systems, and real-time capable runtime monitoring. Sebastian is currently working on data analysis for assessing the safety and security of mission-critical systems.

For more information on Sebastian, 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

ACM Congratulates Student Chapter Excellence Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2020-2021 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 2020-2021 are:

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.

ACM-W NEWS

ACM-W's Webinar Series Celebrates Women in Computing

By highlighting successful technical women who are leading diverse careers in the technology industry, ACM-W’s webinar series, Celebrating Technology Leaders, aims to inform students and early-career professionals about the multitude of career options open to them. The latest episode will feature Women in Cybersecurity on June 9; register here. Previous webinars featured tech entrepreneurship, UI/UX, data, and robotics. To watch the recorded webinars, visit the YouTube playlist.

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

TDS to Relaunch as ACM/IMS Journal of Data Science

ACM/IMS Transactions on Data Science will close to submissions on June 1, 2021. The journal will relaunch under the name ACM/IMS Journal of Data Science. The scope of the journal will be broadened to reflect the multidisciplinary nature of the two professional societies, and to connect researchers and practitioners across the Computer Science, Machine Learning, and Statistics communities. The appointed co-editors of the new journal will be Jelena Bradic (University of California, San Diego), Stratos Idreos (Harvard University), and John Lafferty (Yale University). The new editors are actively working to execute a new vision for the journal that will include innovations in the reviewing and publishing processes, designed to be attractive to these diverse communities. A public announcement will be made this summer regarding the new journal's vision, scope, and submission information. The Journal will open for submissions in the fall.

ACM Queue Presents: "Biases in AI Systems"

In "Biases in AI Systems", Ramya Srinivasan and Ajay Chander, AI researchers at Fujitsu, explore the challenges and best practices in trying to limit the kinds of biases that can occur in the AI pipeline starting from dataset creation and problem formulation to data analysis and evaluation.

Subscribe to Communications of the ACM

Subscribe to Communications of the ACM, the computing industry's most trusted source for news, analysis and insights! Non-members can use our online form and receive a new ACM membership with your 12-month subscription, or request a sample issue using our online free trial issue form.

Copyright © 2021, ACM, Inc.