ACM-W Europe April 2022 Newsletter

 

In this issue:

 

ACM-W Europe 10-year Anniversary

This May we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of ACM-W Europe. This journey has been one of growth and friendship as we build our member network. We have many events planned to celebrate our anniversary including a gala later in the year. However, it is fitting that the celebration focuses on our valued members. It is our members that have volunteered to support each other, and network together to promote women in all aspects of the computing field. We will continue to thank our members throughout the year and this month we are thanking Dorota Filipczuk, who is part of the womENcourageTM Steering Committee and has served as Hackathon Chair in the celebration for several years. 

How long have you been a member of the ACM-W Europe?

I became an ACM student member and joined ACM-W in 2015.

Why did you join?

That year, I received a scholarship to attend the ACM-WE Celebration of Women in Computing: womENcourage in Uppsala, Sweden. I really enjoyed the event and joining ACM-WE afterwards was a natural step for me.

How are you associated with the ACM-W Europe?

A couple years after I attended womENcourage as a participant, I got involved in organising the event – I joined the 2018 Organising Committee as the Hackathon Chair. Since 2019, I have been volunteering as a member of the womENcourage Steering Committee.

How has the ACM-W Europe impacted you?

While being part of the ACM-W Europe network helped me in many ways over the years, I think the most important benefit I gained from being an ACM-W Europe volunteer has been the opportunity to meet amazing leaders. Working as part of this international community, I got to observe many people I consider as role models. This experience taught me what leadership really means, and that it is not necessarily the same as being a manager or an organiser. And, although people’s leadership styles differ, at some point I noticed that there is something successful leaders have in common: they care about people. In fact, leadership is not about telling people what to do. Quite opposite – it is about supporting them in what they want to do. It all may sound trivial, but growing within the ACM-W Europe community, from a student member to the womENcourage Steering Committee member, I got a practical lesson of leadership which I don’t think I would have got anywhere else at such an early stage of my career.

 

womENcourage – Celebration of Women in Computing

Call for Expressions of Interest for 2024

It’s this time of the year when we are opening a call for hosting womENcourage 2024.

Here is the timeline:

EoI submission deadline: 10 November 2022 23:59 AoE

Notification of a successful EoI: by 28 November 2022

Full Proposal deadline: 26 January 2023 23:59 AoE

Notification of a successful Proposal: by 1 March 2023

More details here.

2022 in Larnaka, Cyprus

In 2022, womENcourageTM invites the Arts to join our celebration! The theme of this year’s celebration is  “Drawing New Lines in Science”. This year’s ACM womENcourage 2022 recognises that both the Arts and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) share a focus on creative thinking, problem-solving and experiential, immersive learning. We are celebrating ways in which the Arts relate to STEM, often referred to as STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). The venue for womENcourage 2022 will be the campus of the University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus (UCLan Cyprus). Find out more and take a virtual tour of the campus here.

Event Dates: 21-23 September 2022
Extended Abstracts (and optionally posters) due: 9 May 2022
Detailed Workshop/Tutorials Proposals due: 3 June 2022
Scholarship applications due: 10 June 2022
Registration Open: 6 June 2022
Hackathon Registration: 25 July – 21 September 2022


Blog – Telling Our Stories: Beatrice Evelin Gherbezan

Each year we meet incredible women at womENcourage™ celebrations. We ask womENcourage participants to tell their stories in blog posts. We continue 2022 with Beatrice Eveline Gherbezan,  who is a 3rd-year Chemical Engineering student at the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland who was hesitant to participate in a celebration not related to her course but found a family in womENcourage.

“…more than just a conference, being part of a determined team…”

As I was not only participating but also volunteering at the event, I got to take part or at least see snippets of each and all the talks and tutorials. I could never pick one of the events over the others, yet I could admit that “How to start a local chapter” helped me realise that I should focus on myself rather than on how others are doing. Being part of the volunteering team made me realise the importance of open but professional communication. I learned how to listen to other people better. I can wholeheartedly say that the ACM womENcourage conference helped me improve my teamwork, management, orientation, and computer skills as at the helpdesk, you are helping people dealing with many different problems. At the end of the day, I could say the volunteering team and the organisers made me feel so welcome that it felt like we were one big family.

Read more from Beatrice on our blog.

 

ACM-W Europe Social Media Highlights

Not on social media? Not a problem. In March 2022, our most popular post on Facebook were:

  1. 10th anniversary announcement, and our highlighting the contributions of Taras V. Panchenko. Read more in our March newsletter.
  2. The announcement on #WiSTEM Intervarsity, an event that sees WiSTEM societies from all over Ireland come together for a day of talks, guest speakers, career development, and networking.
  3. Our highlight of featured ACM #Distinguished #Speaker: Joanna Isabelle Olszewska. Joanna Isabelle Olszewska is a British Computer Scientist and is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) at the University of the West of Scotland where she leads research in Algorithms and Software for Intelligent Vision Systems. For more information about Joanna, please visit her DSP speaker information page.

 

On Twitter, the top tweets were about the blog post featuring ACM fellow Prof Paola Inverardi and the announcement of Celebrating Technology Leaders Episode on Mental Health, Wellbeing and Self-care. Previous episodes of “Celebrating Technology Leaders” can be viewed at this Youtube playlist.

 

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

 

Announcements and News

ACM General Election

ACM general #election – deadline 16:00 UTC, 23 May 2022.  

2022 Candidates for ACM President, Yannis Ioannidis and Joseph A. Konstan are working together to solicit and answer questions from the computing community! Ask your questions on this page.

On diversity, the candidates responded: 

  • Yannis Ioannidis:  I would like to introduce a new norm of requiring the presence of members falling into any of the gaps identified in all major ACM committees and boards. 
  • John Konstan: Equity is not the sole responsibility of the disempowered. Diversity is not the sole responsibility of the minority. Inclusion is not the sole responsibility of the excluded. 

You can find all their responses to the first round of questions here.

 

Apply for Opportunities in ACM-W Communications Committee

The ACM-W Communications Committee is pleased to announce several position openings. Please take a look at the announcement, and share as appropriate with your team, and anyone you think might be interested in applying or nominating a candidate.  More details here.

 

Open PhD and Post-doc Positions

The Walter Benjamin Programme enables researchers in the postdoctoral training phase to independently conduct their own research project at a location of their choice. The project can be carried out at a research institution in Germany or abroad, with the host institution providing support for the project.

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is now expanding its existing funding measures for academics who have fled their home country by opening up the Walter Benjamin Programme with the aim of enabling this target group to become integrated into the German research system. In the current situation, this practical support measure for refugee researchers from all regions of the world is also an expression of solidarity with researchers from Ukraine as well as persecuted researchers from Russia. 

Deadlines: Proposals may be submitted at any time.

 

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. 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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