ACM-W Europe October 2020 Newsletter

 

In this issue:

 

womENcourage 2020 Took Place Online, 24-27th September

We all gathered virtually together at ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan for the ACM womENcourage 2020, more than 200 registered participants from some 40 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas and Australia.

Dr. Araz Yusubov, Dean of the School of IT and Engineering, ADA University, led this year’s organization and thanks all the participants for their active participation and meaningful contribution to the first ever virtual womENcourage celebration.

The ACM-W Europe Chair, Ruth Lennon posted: 

“Moving from in person to virtual conferences is hard. How do you engage people with the program? Have a dedicated team constantly texting in chat windows? have a live ‘networking session’ that runs 12 hours a day? I think the most important thing is to have an engaging program and amicable people willing to meet. Keynotes, company representatives, organisers and all attendees willing to contribute to the discussion. These past 4 days were a great success. It is not often that I get to say how much fun I had working with an organising committee. The photo really is a good image to represent a year well spent. I have to thank Araz Yusubov, Bev Bachmayer, Rukiye Altin, Adriana Wilde and Nuria Castell. ACM-W Europe Thank you ADA University for hosting womENcourage 2020. I look forward to The ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: womENcourage 2021! #networking #womENcourage2020“

ACM womENcourage 2021 will go to Prague, Czech Republic next year. We are already excited!

This event, chaired by Dita Přikrylová, founder of czechitas, is due to be held in September. Plans for both in person and virtual formats are being organised so that we are ready for whatever happens.  In this year’s womENcourage we hope to encourage bridging communities. Computing impacts the lives of so many people more so now than ever before. In this conference we will explore the many aspects of computing and how it touches our lives.

 

Blog Series: Breath of Fresh Air: Diversity Heroes – Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein

As a community, we embrace our diversity; diversity makes us better, stronger. We cannot do enough to applaud all of our heroes in their diversity.  They are people who are ACM members, volunteers or experts in their field.  Starting from June 2020, we have been reaching out to a number of heroes about their tech career journey, about their perspective on intersectionality and reflect on initiatives for equality.

This month’s guests are Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein.

Catherine D’Ignazio is a scholar, artist/designer and hacker mama who focuses on feminist technology, data literacy and civic engagement. She is an Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. She is also Director of the Data + Feminism Lab which uses data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial equity, particularly in relation to space and place.

 

Lauren Klein is an associate professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab.  Klein works at the intersection of digital humanities, data science, and early American literature, with a research focus on issues of gender and race.

 

Their blog post, “How to Teach Data Science like an Intersectional Feminist”, was adapted from their book, Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020). More information about the book can be found at datafeminism.io.

“Women faculty comprise less than a third of computer science and statistics faculty. More than 80 percent of artificial intelligence professors are men. This gender imbalance, and the narrowness of vision that results, is compounded by the fact that data science is often framed as an abstract and technical pursuit. Steps like cleaning and wrangling data are presented as solely technical conundrums; there is less discussion of the social context, ethics, values, or politics of data.”

Read more on our blog.

 

ACM-W Europe Social Media Highlights

Not on social media? Not a problem. In September, our most popular posts on Facebook were: 

  1. A. Ailamaki receives 2020 VLDB Women in Database Research Award. Professor Anastasia Ailamaki has been recognized with a 2020 VLDB Endowment Award for pioneering research on the interaction between hardware micro-architecture and database engine performance. More information and the award speech here.
  2. Registration announcement for womENcourage.
  3. Announcement on Google series of free technical writing courses designed for professional software engineers, computer science students, and engineering-adjacent roles. 

 

On Twitter, the top tweet was the ACM womENcourage announcement.

Our top media tweet was Professor Anastasia Ailamaki’s recognition with a 2020 VLDB Endowment Award. We congratulate her wholeheartedly.

Like our ACM-WE Facebook page, follow us on Twitter (@acmweurope) or Linkedin to get the updates.

 

Announcements and News

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna are the first two women to share the Nobel prize in Chemistry

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Chemistry

Read more here.

 

Join the ACM-W Europe Communications and Outreach Team

We are always on the lookout for new talent to join our communications team. You will be part of a dynamic volunteer team passionately working to disseminate information of interest to our community. The team publishes monthly newsletters, regular blog posts, and promotes relevant gender issues in computing and celebrates community success in social media (Facebook, and Twitter).

You can work with us on any number of our initiatives:

  1. The newsletter: Interview community members, and write articles
  2. Social media: Help create social media campaigns;  expand our reach in Linkedin.
  3. Website: Help maintain a dynamic website with up-to-date community news
  4. Blog: Write blog articles, or work with community members on blog series.  
  5. Outreach campaigns: E.g., reach out to ACM-W chapters for regular communication series
  6. Wikipedia campaign: Help us create a database of women in computing in Europe and regularly draft articles for Wikipedia.

If you are interested, please contact us at acm_w_europe_outreach@acm.org  with a brief covering letter explaining why you would like to work with us.

Events, Conferences and other Deadlines

  • AI for Good Global Summit 2020 (continuous digital event)

The 2020 edition of the AI for Good Global Summit will be presented as a continuous digital event throughout the year, featuring weekly programming across multiple formats, platforms and time zones, including keynotes, expert webinars, project pitches, Q&As, performances, demos, interviews, networking and more. ACM Prize recipient and ACM Fellow Shwetak Patel was a featured keynote speaker on July 9, addressing healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

  • Ada Festival Launch

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 15:00 BST will mark the launch of the Ada Scotland Festival – a series of online events focused on addressing gender imbalance in Computing Science.

At this event, the organisers will talk about what they hope to achieve with the Festival and they’ll hear from dressCode founder Toni Scullion on why addressing the gender gap in Computing Science is so important. This will be followed by a Q&A session with two of Barclays’ Software Engineering Graduate Apprentices.

The event includes  a number of exciting competitions, featuring some great prizes courtesy of the brilliant Festival supporters.

The event is open to pupils, teachers, parents, and anyone else with an interest in addressing gender imbalance in Computing Science education, and the tech sector more widely.

 

PhD, Post-Doc and Faculty Job Announcements

  • Irène Curie Fellowship, Tenure-Track Positions in TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands

As of July 2019, TU/e has launched the Irène Curie Fellowship. This program is aimed at talented women who pursue an academic career in our European top research university. TU/e will open vacancies for assistant, associate and full professors exclusively for female talent during the first six months of recruitment. Under the European jurisdiction, it is lawful to specifically recruit underrepresented groups.

Read more here.

Other

For other openings in Informatics in Europe, see the Informatics Job Platform. 

 

ACM Awards and Advanced Grades of Membership Deadlines

Each year ACM recognizes outstanding achievements of its members through awards that cover a spectrum of professional and technological areas and different stages of professional development. 

To learn more about awards, we recommend the article by the ACM President Cherri M. Pancake, who dispels some common myths about ACM Awards and Honors in the Communications of the ACM, August 2019. One of the myths is that the ACM Awards never honour people working outside North America. Prof. Pancake writes that even though nothing would make ACM committees happier than to recognise the achievements of people from around the globe, there are very few nominations. Therefore, please consider nominating for the Awards below. 

ACM offers a wide range of awards (Source: Dispelling Common Myths About ACM Awards and Honors)

Students
Early Career
Mid Career
Late Career
Area-Specific, typically Mid to Late Career

For SIG-specific Awards, please visit here.

For ACM Advanced Grades of Membership, please visit here.

 

Thank you for joining us in recognizing the accomplishments of ACM Women in Europe and ensuring they are nominated for ACM Awards they deserve.

 

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