ACM MemberNet - June 29, 2023

June 29, 2023

Welcome to the June 2023 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 in our archive.

Read coverage of ACM in the news media.

Is there a person, event, or issue you'd like to see covered? Please email [email protected].

Kunle Olukotun Receives ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award

ACM and the IEEE Computer Society have named Kunle Olukotun, a Professor at Stanford University, as the recipient of the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award for contributions and leadership in the development of parallel systems, especially multicore and multithreaded processors.

In the early 1990s, Olukotun became a leading designer of a new kind of microprocessor known as a "chip multiprocessor"—today called a "multicore processor." His work demonstrated the performance advantages of multicore processors over the existing microprocessor designs at the time. Olukotun’s multicore design eventually became the industry standard.

The Eckert-Mauchly Award is known as the computer architecture community’s most prestigious award. It is co-sponsored by ACM and the IEEE Computer Society and comes with a $5,000 prize.

Read the ACM news release.

AWARDS

Call for Nominations for ACM Awards

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 seeks your help in building and diversifying the nomination pool for our ACM Awards. It is often the case that people wonder why a specific person who seems highly deserving has not received an ACM award. The common answer is that the person was never nominated.

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. Also keep in mind ACM's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion when nominating. Candidates for ACM Awards do not need to be members to be nominated. While candidates for advanced member grades (Fellow or Distinguished Member) must be ACM members, candidates for ACM Awards do not need to be members to be nominated. Nominations for the main awards are due December 15, 2023.

MEMBER RECOGNITION

Call for ACM Fellow/Senior/Distinguished Member Nominations

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. The deadline for nominations is September 7.

The Distinguished Member advanced grade of membership recognizes those ACM members with at least 15 years of professional experience and 5 years of Professional Membership in the last 10 years who have achieved significant accomplishments or have made a significant impact on the computing field. Nominations are accepted on an annual basis. The deadline for nominations is August 1.

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

SIG NEWS

View on Demand: FCRC 2023 Plenary Speakers

This month, the 2023 ACM Federated Computing Research Conference assembled a spectrum of affiliated research conferences and workshops. Every day of the conference featured a prominent plenary speaker addressing a significant topic in the computing field, and a single plenary panel was also held.

Plenary Speakers

2023 Eckert-Mauchly Award recipient Kunle Olukotun (Stanford University): “Computing in the Foundation Model Era”
2021 Eckert-Mauchly Award recipient Margaret Martonosi (US National Science Foundation): “Taking on the World's Challenges: The Role of Computing Research and Innovation”
2012 A.M. Turing Award recipient Shafi Goldwasser (University of California Berkeley): “Constructing and Deconstructing Trust: Employing Cryptographic Recipe in the ML Domain”
Don Towsley (University of Massachusetts): “The Quantum Internet: Recent Advantages and Challenges”
Torsten Hoefler (ETH Zurich): “Scalable and Efficient AI: From Supercomputers to Smartphones”

Plenary Panel

"Reflecting on 50 Years of Computing Research, and Future Outlook"
Panelists: Hagit Attiya (Technion), 2021 A.M. Turing Award recipient Jack Dongarra (University of Tennessee at Knoxville), Mary Hall (University of Utah), Lizy Kurian John (The University of Texas at Austin), Huan Liu (Arizona State University), and Guy L. Steele Jr. (Oracle Labs)

2023 ACM SIG Elections Results

The following SIGS have conducted elections in 2023:

SIGAPP
SIGARCH
SIGCAS
SIGDOC
SIGENERGY
SIGEVO
SIGMETRICS
SIGMICRO
SIGOPS
SIGSPATIAL
SIGWEB

Visit the ACM SIG Elections page for all results.

2023 ACM SIGGRAPH Election

Members of SIGGRAPH are hereby notified of the ongoing 2023 ACM SIGGRAPH Election which is being held 15 June–11 August 2023 (16:00 UTC).

For more information and to vote, visit the 2023 ACM SIGGRAPH Election webpage.

SIG AWARDS

2023 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing

The Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing is awarded for outstanding papers on the principles of distributed computing, whose significance and impact on the theory or practice of distributed computing have been evident for at least a decade. It is sponsored jointly by the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC) and the EATCS Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC). The 2023 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing has been awarded for introducing Information-Theoretic Secure Multiparty Computations and showing how to achieve maximal resilience to malicious adversaries while providing unconditional security.

"Completeness Theorems for Non-Cryptographic Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computation," by Michael Ben-Or, 2012 A.M. Turing Award recipient Shafi Goldwasser, and Avi Wigderson
"Multiparty Unconditionally Secure Protocols," by David Chaum, Claude Crépeau, and Ivan Damgård
"Verifiable Secret Sharing and Multiparty Protocols with Honest Majority," by Tal Rabin and Michael Ben-Or

2023 Gödel Prize Recipients Announced

The Gödel Prize is presented annually for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, and is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT). This year’s papers were both published in Journal of the ACM (JACM), which has published two-thirds (67%) of the Gödel Prize winners in the last five years. The 2023 prize is awarded to the following papers:

"Exponential Lower Bounds for Polytopes in Combinatorial Optimization," by Samuel Fiorini, Serge Massar, Sebastian Pokutta, Hans Raj Tiwary, and Ronald de Wolf
"The Matching Polytope Has Exponential Extension Complexity," by Thomas Rothvoss

Announcing 2023 ACM SIGGRAPH Award Recipients

ACM SIGGRAPH is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s awards and new members of the SIGGRAPH Academy for research and contributions to a wide array of topics in the fields of computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Visit the SIGGRAPH awards webpage for a full listing of this year's recipients.

Best Paper Awards Given at Recent ACM SIG Conferences

ACM's Special Interest Groups (SIGs) regularly cite outstanding individuals for their contributions in 38 distinct technological fields. Some awards presented (or to be presented) at conferences:

You can find them all here.

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS

DAC 2023, July 9–13

The Design Automation Conference is the premier destination for the entire ecosystem devoted to the design and design automation of electronic circuits and systems. DAC offers outstanding education, training, exhibits and networking opportunities for a worldwide community of chip and system designers, researchers, academics, executives, and electronic design tool vendors. Keynote speakers are Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli (UC Berkeley), Heike Riel (IBM), Walden Rhines (Cornami, Inc.), Mark Horowitz (Stanford University). The conference will be held in San Francisco, California, USA.

ITiCSE 2023, July 10–12

The Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education will cover all aspects of educating the next generation of computer scientists, including sessions on DEI, programming, Generative AI, computing in primary school, computing in secondary school, and more. Matti Tedre and Henrikka Vartiainen (University of Eastern Finland), Paul Denny (University of Auckland), Brett Becker (University College Dublin), Juho Leinonen (University of Auckland), and James Prather (Abilene Christian University) will keynote. The event is being held in Turku, Finland.

GECCO 2023, July 15–19 (Hybrid)

The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference presents the latest high-quality results in genetic and evolutionary computation. Workshop topics include genetic algorithms, genetic programming, ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence, complex systems, artificial life, robotics, evolvable hardware, neuroevolution, and more. Keynote speakers include Riccardo Poli (University of Essex), 2022 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award recipient Carla P. Gomes (Cornell University), Kenneth De Jong (George Mason University). This will be a hybrid event held in-person in Lisbon, Portugal.

L@S 2023, July 20–22

The theme of this year's Learning at Scale focuses on the "learning futures" that the L@S community aims to develop and support in the coming decades. Workshops and tutorials include "A/B Testing and Platform-Enabled Learning Research," "Introducing an Open-source Adaptive Tutoring System to Accelerate Learning Sciences Experimentation," "Promoting Principles and Reproducibility Practices within the L@S Community," and more. Keynote speakers are Sasha Poquet (Technical University Munich) and Simon Buckingham Shum (University of Technology Sydney). The event will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

SIGIR 2023, July 23–27

The International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval will feature workshops on "Implicit Author Characterization from Texts for Search and Retrieval," "Retrieval-Enhanced Machine Learning," "Reaching Efficiency in Neural Information Retrieval," and more. Keynote speakers are Marc Najork (Google Research), Chih-Jen Lin (National Taiwan University), Ranjitha Kumar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Ryen W. White (Microsoft Research). The event will be held in Taipei, Taiwan.

PEARC 2023, July 23–27

The Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference provides a global forum for students and professionals to discuss challenges, opportunities, and solutions for advanced research and data-intensive computing. The conference theme this year is "Computing for the Common Good." Plenary speakers are DK Panda (Ohio State University), İlkay Altıntaş (University of California San Diego), Al Kuslikis (American Indian Higher Education Consortium), and Suzanne A. Pierce (Jackson School of Geosciences). The conference is being held in Portland, Oregon, USA.

PUBLIC POLICY

ACM Technology Policy Council Approves Two New Products

As detailed in a recent ACM Bulletin, June saw publication of Issue 7 of the ACM global Technology Policy Council's ACM TechBriefs. Titled "The Data Trust Deficit," the new brief posits that "the full potential of data-driven systems cannot be realized without better understanding the roots of the distrust they can engender." Its key conclusions are:

The degree to which people trust data-driven systems depends heavily upon the level of their trust in the institution, sector, or broader data ecosystem in which that system operates.
Disadvantaged groups may distrust data-driven systems based upon adverse experience of bias, making better understanding of the structural roots of such distrust imperative.
Better data-driven systems themselves — not simply better information about them or greater digital literacy — are essential to address the data trust deficit and achieve greater trust in the broader data ecosystem and its institutions.

The new ACM TechBrief, latest in the quarterly series, was penned for the TPC by University of Sheffield researcher Helen Kennedy. It was "shepherded" through the process by TechBriefs Committee member Bran Knowles and Chair Stuart Shapiro.

The TPC also approved this month new and extensive "Principles for the Development, Deployment, and Use of Generative AI Technologies." The new principles were jointly produced by a 30+-person working group drawn from the Council's constituent Europe and US Technology Policy Committees, which each also endorsed them.

The document addresses four new issues uniquely posed by the rise and rapid proliferation generative AI. It also revises and restates nine additional principles first discussed in the Council's similarly developed October 2022 joint "Statement on Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems" and draws upon its January 2023 ACM TechBrief: "Safer Algorithmic Systems."

Europe TPC Comments on Revised UK AI White Paper

Having provided feedback last September to the government of the United Kingdom on the initial draft of its AI policy paper, Europe TPC this month commented on the second iteration of that report, "A Pro-Innovation Approach to AI Regulation." Three of Europe TPC's principal initial recommendations were included in the revised white paper. The committee's wide-ranging comments reiterated its fourth original recommendation that the new framework expressly address environmental issues associated with artificial intelligence and advanced six new recommendations, including that the government "foster the development of the workforce required to support a thriving AI ecosystem by expressly recognizing and promoting informatics education" as articulated by the EuropeTPC-supported Informatics for All coalition.

USTPC Hosts US Chief Deputy CTO, Comments on AI Accountability and Automated Surveillance

USTPC's virtual spring quarterly meeting of its Secretariat and full membership featured remarks and extended Q&A with US Principal Deputy Chief Technology Officer Deirdre Mulligan of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Mulligan (of the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley) provided an overview of, among other matters: the federal government's multi-agency efforts to foster the production of "guardrails" for the development and deployment of generative AI technologies; bias and discrimination in AI systems broadly; and appealed to USTPC members to continue contributing to OSTP and other federal requests for technology-oriented input.

Just days after Mulligan's remarks, USTPC urged the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to draw upon its new generative AI Principles, and the two prior documents linked above, in its "AI Accountability" inquiry. USTPC made a similar request of OSTP mid-month with respect to its December 2022 and August 2021 policy statements regarding remote proctoring technologies in response to a request for information on "Automated Worker Surveillance and Management."

Connect with ACM's Tech Policy Groups!

To learn more about upcoming programs and the work of ACM's Technology Policy groups, follow @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.

Featured Member Benefit: Auto/Home/Renters Insurance

Could you be paying too much for your auto, home or renter’s insurance? Find out today through AMBA Compare: ACM’s exclusive member benefit. Call 1-800-503-9230 or visit ambacompare.com/acm. AMBA Compare is designed to help members easily compare coverages to make sure you’re getting the best protection for your money!

ACM Academic Department 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 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.

LEARNING CENTER

ACM ByteCast Interviews Pattie Maes

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 this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Pattie Maes, a Professor at MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences. Maes runs MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces research group and is a faculty member in MIT's center for Neuro-Biological Engineering. Here, she recounts her path to computing, provides historical perspective on the cyclical nature of the field of AI, recalls some of the designs and applied technologies she has worked on, offers her thoughts on building diverse teams, and more.

ACM ByteCast Interviews H.-S. Philip Wong

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 this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts H.-S. Philip Wong, the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He is also Chief Scientist of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), where he was previously Vice President of Corporate Research. Wong tells how he entered the field of electrical engineering, describes the key challenges of scaling down technologies and the potential of drawing inspiration from biological systems in designing better computing systems, and offers advice for aspiring engineers and touches on the ethical and environmental implications of some of the biggest emerging trends.

Listen to ACM ByteCast interviews here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

View on Demand: ACM TechTalk With Daniel Zingaro and Leo Porter

Register to view the TechTalk, "LLMs: A New Way to Teach Programming" with Daniel Zingaro and Leo Porter—now on demand. Instructors and researchers know how challenging it can be for students to learn to program. Students need to iteratively learn many skills, such as using correct syntax, tracing code, using common programming patterns, writing code, and testing/debugging the code they write. Struggling with any one of these tasks may mean that the student will fail to solve whatever problem they are working on. In this talk, Zingaro and Porter explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT can shift the skills needed to succeed at programming and enable more students to become successful programmers.

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

EDUCATION

ACM Ethics in Computing Education: Algorithmic Bias

Hosted by EngageCSEdu, The Ethics & Computing Repository is designed to aid studying, or teaching courses, involving ethical issues related to a broad range of computing topics. It is a collection of articles, mainly from popular media and many of them recent. Each month MemberNet will feature a different subject in ethics and computing, offering a variety of articles, reports, and other interesting and informative items for readers to explore.

This month, the focus is "Algorithmic Bias." Titles under this category include "Algorithmic Bias: Who Is Making Sure the A.I. Machines Aren’t Racist?" "The Death and Life of an Admissions Algorithm," "We Teach AI Systems Everything, Including Our Biases," and many more.

STUDENT NEWS

ACM Europe Seasonal Schools

ACM Europe Seasonal Schools focus on educating researchers on a general or specialized topic over the duration of one or two weeks and involve a small number of students. They provide a separate instrument for serving the computing community, achieving different goals from those of typical conferences. For more information about this yearly program, below is a list of this year's schools. Note that applications for DIGHUM will be open until July 7.

RecSys Summer School 2023: June 12–16, 2023, Copenhagen University, Geografisk Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark
CySeP 2023: Cybersecurity and Privacy Summer School: June 12–16, 2023, KTH Kista Campus, Stockholm, Sweden
PUMPS+AI 2023: Programming and Tuning Massively Parallel Systems + Artificial Intelligence Summer School: June 26–30, 2023, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain
2023 ACM Europe Summer School on “HPC Computer Architectures for AI and Dedicated Applications”: July 2–7, 2023, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain
ACM Europe Summer School in Data Science 2023: July 10–14, 2023, Royal Olympic, Athens, Greece
DIGHUM: The 2nd ACM Digital Humanism Summer School: September 4–8, 2023, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

For more information and updates, visit the ACM Europe Seasonal Schools page.

Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions: Submission Deadlines

ACM Student Research Competitions (SRCs) 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 were presented at PLDI 2023. The next conferences accepting submissions are:

Mobicom 2023, October 2–6, 2023, deadline July 1, 2023
SC 2023, November 12–17, 2023, deadline August 5, 2023
ICCAD 2023, October 29–November 2, 2023, deadline August 26, 2023
SIGCSE 2024, March 20–23, 2024, deadline October 13, 2023

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.

Featured ACM Distinguished Speaker: Asad Masood Khattak

Asad Masood Khattak has over 14 years of industry and academia experience in various capacities, such as Developer, Webmaster, System Analyst, Research Associate, Team Leader, Postdoctoral Fellow, Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor, and Associate Professor. His areas of interest include semantic web, ontology engineering, context-aware computing, data mining, machine learning, healthcare, smart cities, and secure computing. Khattak's lectures include "A Deep Learning Platform for Analyzing Social Media Contents," "Cybersecurity Challenges of Critical Cyber Infrastructure," and more. He is available to speak through the ACM Distinguished Speaker Program.

For more information about Khattak, please visit his DSP speaker information page.

MEETUPS

ACM Local Meetups connect smart technical people at local city events. They are informal groups that meet regularly to discuss a diverse array of computing topics. The following local ACM Meetups have been scheduled:

ACM Local Meetups

Youngstown: NEOACM REMOTE General Assembly Meeting, July 2
This is a monthly meeting where will be reports from the treasurer, secretary, and committee heads. We will have article discussions and lightning talks.
Kansas CIty: ACM-Kansas City Meeting, July 13
This is the monthly meeting where a specific topic is presented, and an informal general discussion occurs after.
Orange County: Azure Databricks, July 19
Azure Databricks provides a cloud-based Apache Spark environment that can be scaled up and out to tackle your big data analytics needs. We'll look at how to set up your first Azure Databricks cluster, how to use shared notebooks in a collaborative environment, and how to leverage the integrated Azure Machine Learning capabilities.
SF Bay: How A Toxic Workplace Environment Impacts Employee Engagement, July 21
In an era when employee retention is more important than ever, companies are looking for ways to attract great talent and create environments where employees can thrive. In this interactive and informative presentation, you will learn what employees want and what the best firms are doing to retain their best performers.

ACM Local Meetups are active in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mumbai, New York City, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Rio de Janeiro, Sacramento, San Francisco, Surabaya, Washington DC, and Youngstown. If you are interested in organizing a Meetup in your locale, please contact Andrew Conklin.

CHAPTERS NEWS

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 the new chapters that were chartered May 12 through June 16, 2023:

ACM Student Chapters:

AMU ACM Student Chapter, Aligarh, India
IES College of Technology ACM Student Chapter, Bhopal, India

ACM Professional Chapters:

Human-Centered AI ACM SIGCHI Chapter, Swansea, Wales, UK

ACM-W NEWS

Celebrating Technology Leaders: Inspiring Women of DevOps

DevOps engineering is a relatively new career focused on building bridges between the developmental and operational sides of software development. But what does it take to become a DevOps engineer, and what does the career progression look like? What kind of work environment do they operate in, and what are their most significant challenges? And is it a promising career for women in tech? In this episode of "ACM-W Celebrating Technology Leaders," taking place July 12, 2:30 pm EDT (6:30 UTC) you will hear from women technologists with successful DevOps careers to learn from their experiences, both as DevOps and as women in the field. Join the panel—Jessica Kolinowski (connectRN), Kaheira Henderson (Freelance), Dotty Nordberg (Pure Storage), and Ayesha Noor (YotaScale)—with host Bushra Anjum and learn more about DevOps and the opportunities it may offer.

Previous episodes of "Celebrating Technology Leaders" can be viewed here.

Above and Beyond Scholarship: Hsiu-Chin Lin

As a recipient of an ACM-W Scholarship, Hsiu-Chin Lin knows how much it means for women in computer science to set an example for future generations, and how impactful ACM-W can be in one’s life. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University. Her research spans model-based control, optimization, and machine learning for manipulators and quadruped robots. She is also the Program Co-Chair for the 19th and 20th Conferences on Robots and Vision. Read more of her background, professional interests, and how attending a conference utilizing the ACM-W Scholarship impacted her career here.

Telling Our Stories: Manjola Zeneli

Each year, a gathering of incredible women can be found at the womENcourage celebrations, and participants are encouraged to tell their stories in blog posts. This tradition continues in 2023 with Manjola Zeneli, who studied for both Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Telecommunication Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Tirana and is now an IT specialist at Tetra Solutions. She did her PhD studies on cybersecurity in the Technical University of Sofia and has presented and published a paper named “Pathway of the Applications on Cyber Security in Albania.” Read more about Zeneli's story here.

womENcourage: Trondheim, Norway, 20-22 September 2023

The 10th ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: womENcourage 2023 will take place at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, on 20-22 September, 2023. The theme of the conference is "Computing Connecting Everyone." Open to all genders, womENcourage was initiated by ACM-W Europe and aimed at connecting women from diverse technical disciplines and encouraging them to pursue their education and profession in computing. WomENcourage brings together women in the computing profession and related technical fields to exchange knowledge and experience and provide special support for women who are pursuing their academic degrees and starting their careers in computing. Through a program packed with insightful topics and engaging educational and networking activities, womENcourage provides a unique experience of the collective energy, drive, and excellence that professional women share to support each other.

ACM Scholarships for Women Computing Students to Attend Research Conferences

With Research Computer Science Conference Scholarships, ACM-W provides support for women undergraduate and graduate students in computer science and related programs to attend research computer science conferences around the world. This exposure to computing research can inspire a student to continue onto the next level of their academic or professional career. The ACM-W scholarships are divided between scholarships of up to $600 for intra-continental conference travel, and scholarships of up to $1,200 for intercontinental conference travel. Scholarship applications are evaluated in six groups each year, in order to distribute awards across a range of conferences. Learn more about ACM-W scholarships and how to apply here.

Join ACM-W's Membership Email List

Did you know that ACM-W offers a general email distribution list for its members? This ACM-W public list is a communication channel for disseminating general information about ACM-W, bulletins, and upcoming events, which can be joined here. Also read the ACM-W Connections newsletter for updates on ACM-W programs, local celebrations, scholarships and awards, chapters, and more.

PUBLISHING NEWS

acmqueue: "Cargo Cult AI"

Edlyn V. Levine, CSO of America's Frontier Fund, asks, "Is the ability to think scientifically the defining essence of intelligence?" Evidence abounds that the human brain does not innately think scientifically; however, it can be taught to do so. The same species that forms cargo cults around widespread and unfounded beliefs in UFOs, ESP, and anything read on social media also produces scientific luminaries such as Sagan and Feynman. Today's cutting-edge LLMs are also not innately scientific. But unlike the human brain, there is good reason to believe they never will be unless new algorithmic paradigms are developed.

Read the full article.

ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation Call for EIC Nominations

The term of the current Editors-in-Chief (EiCs) of ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC) is coming to an end. The ACM publications board has set up a nominating committee to assist in selecting the next EiCs. This is a voluntary position. Nominations should include a vita along with a brief statement of why the nominee should be considered. Nominations are due July 1st, 2023, although nominations will continue to be accepted until the position is filled.

For more information, visit the call page.

Inaugural Journal Issues

Proceedings of the ACM on Management of Data (PACMMOD) has published its inaugural issue. PACMMOD is concerned with the principles, algorithms, techniques, systems, and applications of database management systems, data management technology, and science and engineering of data. Papers are generally expected to focus on data-intensive components of data science pipelines; and solve problems in areas of interest to our community (e.g., data curation, optimization, performance, storage, systems), operating within accuracy, privacy, fairness, and diversity constraints. Submissions describing deployed systems and solutions to data science pipelines and/or fundamental experiences and insights from evaluating real-world data science problems are encouraged.

New ACM Books

Geospatial Data Science: A Hands-on Approach for Building Geospatial Applications Using Linked Data Technologies, edited by Manolis Koubarakis, teaches the simple development of geospatial applications based on the principles and software tools of geospatial data science. The book is aimed at researchers and practitioners who would like to know more about this research area and can also be used as a textbook for a last year undergraduate or graduate course. Every chapter of the book contains exercises that can help the readers master the material covered by the chapter. It introduces a new generation of geospatial technologies that have emerged from the development of the Semantic Web and the Linked Data paradigm, and shows how data scientists can use them to build environmental applications easily.

New ACM Journals Open for Submissions

ACM Journal on Responsible Computing (JRC) will publish high-quality original research at the intersection of computing, ethics, information, law, policy, responsible innovation, and social responsibility from a wide range of convergent, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary perspectives. The journal welcomes papers using any or a combination of computational, conceptual, qualitative, quantitative, and other methods to make contributions to knowledge, methods, practice, and theory, broadly defined.

Inspired by the broad agenda of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Communities (JCSS) aims to publish significant and original research from a broad array of computer and information sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences, and engineering fields that support the growth of sustainable societies worldwide, especially including under-represented and marginalized communities. We also welcome research on the ethics of technology, especially from a critical perspective, which explores limitations and concerns with technology-led solutions for sustainable societies.

ACM Transactions on Probabilistic Machine Learning (TOPML) focuses on probabilistic methods that learn from data to improve performance on decision-making or prediction tasks under uncertainty. Optimization, decision-theoretic or information-theoretic methods are within the remit if they are underpinned by a probabilistic structure. The journal welcomes theoretical, methodological, and applied contributions. Purely theoretical contributions are of interest if they introduce novel methodology. Methodological and applied contributions are of interest provided that proposed probabilistic approaches are motivated and empirically corroborated by non-trivial examples or applications. Multidisciplinary approaches with a probabilistic structure are within the scope.

ACM Open: Texas A&M University System, University of Oklahoma

ACM is delighted to welcome the Texas A&M University System and the University of Oklahoma to ACM Open. Through these agreements, researchers and students at participating institutions receive unlimited access to the ACM Digital Library and have the opportunity to publish an unlimited number of research articles Open Access

ACM Open is ACM's transformative open access publishing model for transitioning ACM to become a sustainable open access publisher with the goal of making research publications in the ACM Digital Library fully open access upon publication. A full list of institutions that have signed on to the ACM Open program can be found here.

ACM Transition to Open Access Update

As 2023 marks the midway point in ACM’s timeline to transition the Digital Library to fully Open Access scheduled for the end of 2025, we will continue to provide updates on ACM Open and our Open Access publishing.

In 2022, approximately 25% of the research articles published to the Digital Library were Open Access. Most of these articles were from corresponding authors at 325 institutions participating in ACM Open. The ACM Open program has grown in 2023 with more than 675 institutions and an additional 300 institutions likely to sign on before the year’s end. But we still need the support of the community. This can mean asking your department head to reach out to the university librarian to request that they join ACM Open, cost sharing with computer science departments, and communicating with colleagues within your department about the upcoming transition to mandatory Open Access.

If you’d like to know more about the ACM Open model and our timeline for transitioning to a completely Open Access Publisher, please get in touch and thank you for the continued support of ACM.

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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 employers can get in touch with you.
View Saved Jobs - Save jobs that interest you, add notes, share with friends, and track your applications 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.

ACM MemberNet - June 29, 2023