ACM MemberNet - July 29, 2021

Welcome to the July 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.

July 29, 2021

TOP STORIES

AWARDS

MEMBER RECOGNITION

SIG 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

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate Receives ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Chuchu Fan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the recipient of the 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “Formal Methods for Safe Autonomy: Data-Driven Verification, Synthesis, and Applications.” Fan’s dissertation makes foundational contributions to verification of embedded and cyber-physical systems, and demonstrates applicability of the developed verification technologies in industrial-scale systems. Her dissertation also advances the theory for sensitivity analysis and symbolic reachability and develops verification algorithms and software tools (DryVR, Realsyn). Key contributions of her dissertation include the first data-driven algorithms for bounded verification of nonlinear hybrid systems using sensitivity analysis.

Honorable Mentions for the 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to Henry Corrigan-Gibbs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ralf Jung of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and MIT. Corrigan-Gibbs’s dissertation, “Protecting Privacy by Splitting Trust,” improved user privacy on the internet using techniques that combine theory and practice. Jung’s dissertation, “Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language,” established the first formal foundations for safe systems programming in the innovative programming language Rust.

The 2020 Doctoral Dissertation Award recipients will be formally recognized at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on October 23 in San Francisco. The Doctoral Dissertation Award is accompanied by a prize of $20,000, and the Honorable Mention Award is accompanied by a prize totaling $10,000.

Read the ACM news release.

Patricia Ordóñez and Lisa Smith Named Co-chairs of ACM Diversity and Inclusion Council

Patricia Ordóñez and Lisa Smith have been named Co-chairs of ACM's Diversity and Inclusion Council, effective July 1. Patricia (Patti) Ordóñez is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras. Lisa Smith is the Scholar Program Office Manager at Intel Corp. Read a People of ACM interview with Patti.

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 Select covers People in Computing #7: Women in Hardware and Programming Languages.

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 is December 15, 2021. Other deadlines: Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research: October 8; Doctoral Dissertation: October 31 (for dissertations being translated into English: November 30).

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 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:

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

KDD 2021, August 14 to 18 (online)

The SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining brings together researchers and practitioners from data science, data mining, knowledge discovery, large-scale data analytics, and big data. Keynote speakers include Janil Puthucheary (Member of Parliament, UK), Sharon Glotzer (University of Michigan), Claire Tomlin (University of California, Berkeley) and Vincent Conitzer (Duke University).

ESEC/FSE 2021, August 23 to 28, Athens, Greece (hybrid)

The ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering will be a hybrid online/in-person event. Scheduled keynote speakers are Mira Mezini (TU Darmstadt) on "Programming and Execution Models for Next Generation Code Intelligence Systems," Nachiappan Nagappan (Facebook) on "Product, Process, People and Productivity," and Panos Papadopoulos (Marathon Venture Capital) on "Balance Between Engineering and Company Building."

SIGCOMM 2021, August 23 to 27 (online)

The flagship annual conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication focuses on the applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communication. Workshops will cover 5G measurements, modeling, and use cases; flexible networks; network-application integration; professional development for women; responsible use of the internet; and more. Tutorials will include cloud and other technologies. In addition there will be three hackathons.

DocEng 2021, August 24 to 27 (online)

The 21st ACM Symposium on Document Engineering will include sessions that focus on collaborative work with documents, as well as use of documents and document collections in real-world applications, novel principles, tools and processes that improve our ability to create, manage, maintain, share, and productively use these. ACM Fellow Ophir Frieder (Georgetown University) and Justin Picard (Scantrust) are the scheduled keynote speakers.

PUBLIC POLICY

Hendler Appointed Chair of ACM Technology Policy Council

James Hendler was appointed Chair of ACM's Technology Policy Council effective July 1. The TPC addresses global technology policy. Hendler is the Director of the Institute for Data Exploration and Applications and the Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute. He also heads the RPI-IBM Center for Health Empowerment by Analytics, Learning and Semantics. An ACM Fellow, Hendler served as Chair of ACM’s US Technology Policy Committee from 2018 to 2021.

ACM US Technology Policy Committee Names Epstein Chair

Jeremy Epstein has been named Chair of the ACM US Technology Policy Committee effective July 1. USTPC serves as the focal point for ACM's interaction with US government organizations, the computing community, and the US public in all matters of US public policy related to information technology. Epstein is Lead Program Officer for the National Science Foundation's Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program. He previously served as Vice Chair of ACM's US Public Policy Council (USACM), a forerunner of USTPC.

ACM Europe Technology Policy Committee Comments on European "Health Data Space" Consultation

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

Early last May, the European Commission formally invited public comment in a proceeding somewhat vaguely titled Digital health data and services—the European health data space. Its more precisely stated rationale, which significantly concerned multiple aspects of artificial intelligence technology and use, was framed:
Facilitating better access to and exchange of health data is crucial to ensure increased accessibility, availability and affordability of healthcare, to stimulate innovation in health and care for better treatment and outcomes, and to foster innovative solutions that make use of digital technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI)…. In order to ensure that all possible views are considered in the design of a legal framework for a European Health Data Space and to ensure transparency and accountability, the European Commission invites all interested individuals and stakeholders to share their views and experiences.

Among other points made, ACM's Europe Technology Policy Committee voiced the concern that: "In the longer term, the deployment of AI algorithms could lead to the de-skilling of healthcare professionals," explaining that:
As they come to trust AI systems more and more (or simply opt to routinely follow their recommendations), they could become more likely to lose their expertise and potentially their ability to detect wrong AI recommendations. The problem here is that most AI systems assign users a passive role by making recommendations rather than creating a cooperative decision-making process in which human users can apply their expertise. This is an inherent fallacy in the "human-in-the-loop" approach that transcends issues of trustworthiness and transparency in AI systems. Permitting a human "the last word" in such systems is not sufficient to address this issue. What is needed are real human/AI partnerships.

Europe TPC's submission was spearheaded by Committee Chair Chris Hankin. Principal contributors were Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Oliver Grau, Enrico Nardelli, Gerhard Schimpf, and Gurkan Solmaz.

ACM USTPC Submits Comments to NIST on Accessible and Usable Voting Systems

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

On July 16 ACM's US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC) submitted Comments to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on "Promoting Access to Voting" in response to a formal Request for Information (RFI) by NIST in which it posed 20 questions (and invited more general input) on fostering "greater voter access for people with disabilities." USTPC's Comments responded to eight of those questions addressing four issue sets: election and voting security; balancing privacy and accessibility; website accessibility; and the value of ballot marking devices.

Consistent with its frequent writings regarding the dangers posed by internet connectivity to any part of public or "back office" voting processes, USTPC emphasized that: "Because all voters, no matter what physical or geographical challenges they face, are legally and morally owed a highly secure and private way to cast their ballots, internet-facilitated voting cannot fairly be said to provide meaningful access to the ballot at all." USTPC also urged NIST to "review to full advantage the excellent and extensive recent work done in this arena by NIST itself and many others," and to "affirmatively underscore, contrary to frequent false assertions, that robust accessibility at every stage of the voting process is in no way in tension with maximizing voting security."

The Comments also noted USTPC Chair Jeremy Epstein's role in organizing and managing the process of producing them, and acknowledged by name primary USTPC member contributors Juan Gilbert, Lorraine Kisselburgh, and Barbara Simons.

To learn more about upcoming programs and the work of ACM's Technology Policy groups, follow @ACMpolicy, @USTPC, and @EuropeTPC on Twitter. If you're interested in contributing to the work of ACM's Europe or US Technology Policy Committees, please 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 Mounia Lalmas

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 Mounia Lalmas, Director of Research and Head of Tech Research in Personalization at Spotify, leading a team of researchers in content personalization and discovery.

Watch ACM TechTalk with Scott Hanselman

Watch the ACM TechTalk, Running Linux Apps on Windows: How and Why?, to be presented on Wednesday, August 11 at 1:00 PM EDT by Scott Hanselman, a web developer for Microsoft. Bradley K. Jensen, Principal Data Scientist and Architect in the Data and Analytics Division at Centric Consulting, will moderate.

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

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 SIGMETRICS 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.

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.

Robert James Fine provides IT strategic planning consulting services to both the private sector and nonprofit communities. He launched print publications covering social media and startups, as well as VRVoice.co, a content vertical on virtual reality. He has a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Villanova University, a Master's degree in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University, and an ABD/PhD in Environmental Science and Public Policy from George Mason University.

For more information on Robert, 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

Reminder to Chapters: Submit Annual Reports by August 31

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 2021 (July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021) and is due by August 31, 2021. To complete the report online, you must log in with your unique chapter web account at https://www.acm.org/chapters/chapter-administrative-interface.

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

Celebrating Technology Leaders, Episode 7: "Tech Returnships for Women," August 18

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 next episode features "Tech Returnships for Women" on August 18; register here. Previous webinars featured tech entrepreneurship, UI/UX, data, robotics and cybersecurity. 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

Communications of the ACM Call for Abstracts: Europe Regional Special Section, April 2022

Communications of the ACM will publish the second edition of the CACM Europe Region Special Section in April 2022. It will include 10 to 15 brief articles. In addition, a subset of the submitted abstracts will be selected for an online workshop presentation to be held on August 25-26. Regional Special Sections were created to cover computing research and innovations from around the world, with roughly one such section being published every quarter. Abstracts for this Special Section are invited in the following topics: computing research; industrial impact and startups; societal impact of technology; and government and digital technology. Full information on submissions and the workshop can be found on the RSS Europe website. Abstracts are due August 5.

ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications Seeking New Editor-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM) is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief. Nominations are due August 20.

Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice: Call for Papers

The new ACM journal Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice (DLT) seeks to publish high quality, interdisciplinary research on the research and development, real-world deployment, and/or evaluation of distributed ledger technologies, e.g., blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contract. DLT will offer original research work and innovative practice-driven advancements by DLT experts and researchers from academia and public- and private-sector organizations. For more information see the Call for Papers or email [email protected].

ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization Launches

The new journal ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization (TELO) has launched. The journal covers evolutionary computation and related areas such as population-based methods, Bayesian optimization, and swarm intelligence. TELO's EICs are Darrell Whitley (Colorado State University) and Jürgen Branke (University of Warwick and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).

ACM Publications Welcome New Editors-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST) welcomes Huan Liu as its new Editor-in-Chief, for the term August 1, 2021 to July 31, 2024. Liu is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Arizona State University.

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP) welcomes Robert Bodenheimer as its new Editor-in-Chief, for the term August 1, 2021 to July 31, 2024. Robert is a Professor of Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt University.

ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL) welcomes Anuj Dawar as its new Editor-in-Chief, for the term August 1, 2021 to July 31, 2024. Anuj is Professor of Logic and Algorithms in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge.

ACM Queue Presents: "What Went Wrong? Why we need an IT accident investigation board"

After a five-year hiatus, Poul-Henning Kamp is back with his column, "The Bikeshed." In this installment, Kamp argues: "Governments should create IT accident investigation boards for the exact same reasons they have done so for ships, railroads, planes, and in many cases, automobiles. Denmark got its Railroad Accident Investigation Board because too many people were maimed and killed by steam trains. The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch was created for pretty much the same reasons, but, specifically, because when the airlines investigated themselves, nobody was any the wiser. Does that sound familiar?"

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