ACM-W Europe November 2019 Newsletter

In this issue:

 

ACM Names Prof. Susanne Boll as Distinguished Member

ACM has named Prof. Susanne Boll, professor of Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems at the University of Oldenburg, one of 62 computer scientists worldwide to be recognized this year as Distinguished Members for their outstanding contributions in computing. 

The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10% of ACM worldwide membership based on professional experience as well as significant achievements in the computing field. Prof. Boll is the only female computer scientist from Europe recognised for this honour this year. 

“Each year it is our honour to select a new class of Distinguished Members,” said ACM President Cherri M. Pancake. “Our overarching goal is to build a community wherein computing professionals can grow professionally and, in turn, contribute to the field and the broader society. We are delighted to recognize these individuals for their contributions to computing, and we hope that the careers of the 2019 ACM Distinguished Members will continue to prosper through their participation with ACM.” Read the ACM news release.

Prof. Susanne Boll:  A research leader in Multimedia – A true champion for diversity

Prof. Susanne Boll is a full professor for Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems at the University of Oldenburg and a member of the board of the OFFIS-Institute for Information Technology. OFFIS belongs to the top 5% research institutes among the non-university institutes in computer science in Germany. Prof. Boll has an excellent track record in the field of interactive multimedia and human-computer interaction, with an impressive number of peer-reviewed scientific publications. Prof. Boll has done an outstanding and continued professional service to the ACM community as an active member of both SIGMM and SIGCHI. The research community has recognized her leadership and scientific competence and has entrusted her with chairing important conferences and serving on steering committees, members of editorial boards. 

Over her entire academic career, Prof. Boll has been championing equal opportunities and diversity. She is particularly interested in the factors and environments inspiring young girls to choose STEM subjects in their higher education and leads a research project that explores role models and curricula in Computer Science for high school girls (Smile Smart Future Me). This year, Prof. Boll has been appointed as the Director of Diversity and Outreach in the Executive Committee of ACM SIGMM. You can read Prof. Boll’s views on improving diversity in her field in this interview. 

Heartfelt congratulations to Prof. Susanne Boll!

 

The ACM Europe Council has named Panagiota Fatourou as its new Chair

The ACM Europe Council has named Panagiota Fatourou as its new Chair. Fatourou, who will serve a two-year term through June 30, 2021, is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Crete and at the Foundation of Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH ICS), Greece. She is an elected member of the ACM Europe Council and has been an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

Also elected to two-year terms were Vice-Chair Tom Crick, Professor in Digital Learning and Technology at Swansea University, UK; and Secretary/Treasurer Valerie Issarny, Senior Research Scientist at Inria, France. Read the ACM bulletin.

 

 

womENcourage 2020 at Ada’s University, Baku

The 7th ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: womENcourage 2020 will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan at the ADA University. Let’s get to know Ada’s University this month. 

ADA University was established under the decree dated January 13th, 2014, by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. With students, faculty, and staff from 46 countries around the world, diversity illustrates one of the core values of Ada’s University. The School of Information Technologies and Engineering (SITE) is the youngest school at ADA University. It was founded in 2013 with the vision to become a center of excellence in education and a hub of scientific research and discovery of global caliber in the region. Currently SITE offers three bachelor degree programs in Computer Science, Information Technology and Computer Engineering.

Over the last 4 years, ADA University has also been hosting the Ada’s Legacy: the ACM Celebration in Baku.  This now annual celebration started back in 2016 with Reyyan Ayfer, then founding Chair of ACM-W Europe and attracts participants, women and men alike, from academia, industry and government. 

We cannot wait to host the womENcourage in Azerbaijan. We look forward to seeing you there for another exciting and truly thrilling womENcourage event!

 

New Blog Series: Reflections on womENcourage 2019

Starting from this month, we will be featuring a series of guest blogs from womENcourage 2019 participants. They will share their career journeys, their challenges but what they also love most about this field, and how womENcourage inspires them. 

Our first guest blogger is Enxhi Shkurta from Albania. She graduated from the Polytechnic University of Tirana, in Telecommunications Engineering and is currently doing a Master of Science in Telecommunications at the University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain. 

She writes:  “Finding a female engineering role model in college was like finding a needle in a haystack. BUT, at the womENcourage events, you can meet and talk with many inspirational tech female leaders from every corner of Europe and deep dive into tech trends that are changing the face of computing.”

Read more on our blog.

ACM-W Europe Social Media Highlights

Not on social media? Not a problem. In October, we highlighted research and talks presented at womENcourage 2019.

Our most popular posts on Facebook were: 

  1. Top 10 womENcourage poster: “Evaluation of DysLexML; A Screening Tool for Dyslexia Using Machine Learning” by Thomais Asvestopoulou, Erjona Nikolli, Ioannis Smyrnakis, Vassilios Andreadakis, Ioannis M. Aslanides and Maria Papadopouli
  2. Top 10 womENcourage poster by Konstantina Arnaoutaki: “A Recommender for Mobility as a Service”
  3. womENcourage 2019 – A word cloud based on your feedback

On Twitter, the top tweet was the wonderful artwork generated for the womENcourage 2019, and our beginning post to highlight the top 10 posters in the event. Our top media tweet was the video from the Hackathon sponsors Avio Aereo and CTNA; they’ve sponsored the Work-life balance and smart working challenge.

 

In November, we will be discussing topics in the domains of data science, AI, gender and ethics. The explosive growth in data science and machine learning roles hides a problematic dynamic: women occupy only a minority of these new positions. We firmly believe that it is time to address the connection between the lack of diversity in the AI community and bias in the technical products that are produced by the community.

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

 

Announcements

November 28-29, 2019: AdvCompBIo 2019, Barcelona, Spain

 

The first conference on the Advances in Computational Biology (AdvCompBIo 2019) will bring together women researchers working on a diverse array of topics ranging from systems biology to artificial intelligence. The conference aims to foster collaboration between women scientists and provides an excellent opportunity for women bioinformaticians worldwide to present their work and share ideas about their research projects. The conference is organised by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) and the joint IMIM-UPF Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) and supported by the Bioinfo4Women programme from the BSC. 

ACM-W Europe is co-organising with the ISCB Regional Student Group Spain (RSG-Spain)  the panel discussion “Challenges of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Research”. The panel discussion will take place on Thursday, November 29th, from 14:45h to 15:45h in the La Pedrera Auditorium as part of the scientific programme.  The moderators will be Bedour Alshaigy (ACM-W Europe) and Carlota Rubio (RSG-Spain).

The panellists are:

  • Ángela del Pozo Maté has a degree in Physical Sciences from the Autonomous University of Madrid with the specialities of Solid State Physics and Theoretical Physics. She currently coordinates the Bioinformatics Section of the Institute of Medical and Molecular Genetics (INGEMM) of La Paz University Hospital in Madrid. Her scientific interests are focused on human genetics and the study of the pathogenic mechanisms involved in diseases. 
  • Laia Subirats is a data science researcher at Eurecat – Technology Centre of Catalonia and a part-time lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia. She holds an MSc in Telecommunications Engineering by Pompeu Fabra University, an MSc in Telematics Engineering by the Technical University of Catalonia, and a PhD in Computer Science by Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is interested in spreading science, in encouraging women to pursue technical careers and in the use of free software. 
  • Núria Castell is an associate professor at the Computer Science Department of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), teaching at the Barcelona’s School of Informatics (FIB) since 1982. She is a researcher of the Natural Language Processing group (GPLN), a member of the Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence centre (IDEAI). She participates actively in actions related to increasing the number of women in the IT area.
  • Vicky Schneider is an evolutionary biologist at heart and founder of Tecklings, an initiative centred around conversations and reflections on the human side of technology.  Vicky is the Senior Scientific Program Manager at the Amazon Development Centre in Cambridge, UK. Vicky studied biology at the University of Rome and obtained her PhD on the evolution of sex at the University of Leiden (NL) and Lyon (France). Vicky is a sole parent of a daughter who has travelled and moved with her as she balanced her professional and personal life.

You are invited to register through https://www.iscb.org/advcompbio2019-registration.

 

Calendar of Events and Upcoming Deadlines in Europe

  • November 11-15: CCS 2019, London, UK

The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security brings together information security researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results. The program will cover cryptography, cloud security, forensics, privacy and more, along with several co-located workshops. Keynotes will be delivered by Ingrid Verbauwhede (KULeuven) and N. Asokan (Aalto University).

 

  • November 15: Deadline for ACM-W Rising Star Award Nominations

The ACM-W Rising Star Award is a new award that will recognize a woman whose early-career research has had a significant impact on the computing discipline, as measured by factors such as frequent citation of their work, the creation of a new research area, a high degree of technology transfer and/or other positive influences and societal impact. The award will be given annually, and the recipient will receive a framed certificate and $1,000 stipend. 

Nominations opened on October 1 and will close on November 15. This award was established based on a donation from Andrea Goldsmith, who was named the 2018-2019 ACM Athena Lecturer.

 

  • January 10, 2020: Call for Papers deadline, ACM MMSys, Istanbul, Turkey

The ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys) provides a forum for researchers to present and share their latest research findings in multimedia systems. The conference especially encourages submissions in the following Focus Areas: Machine learning and statistical modelling for video streaming; Volumetric media: from capture to consumption; Fake media and tools for preventing illegal broadcasts. Online submission here. 

 

  • February 20: Deadline for Young Researchers to Apply for 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum, September 20-25, 2020: 

ACM encourages young computer scientists and mathematicians from all over the world to apply for one of the 200 coveted spots to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF), an annual event. The HLF offers all accepted young researchers the great opportunity to personally meet the winners of the most prestigious prizes in their fields. For one week, recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award and the ACM Prize in Computing (Computer Science), the Abel Prize (Mathematics), the Fields Medal (Mathematics), and the Nevanlinna Prize (Mathematical Aspects of Information Science) will engage in a cross-generational scientific dialogue with young researchers in Heidelberg, Germany. Applications will open November 14.

 

PhD, Post-Doc and Faculty Job Announcements

 

  • Computer Science Department at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands is looking for new female assistant professors

The University of Utrecht, Netherlands Computer Science Department is looking for three or more new female(!) assistant professors. The post is of interest to applicants with a background in Computing and Information Sciences, preferably in the areas of Algorithms, Computer Science Education, Process Management and Analytics, Information Science, Artificial Intelligence and possibly in Data Science and Software. To learn how to apply, visit the following link. The application deadline is December 1, 2019.

 

  • 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.

 

  • Lakeside Labs, Austria is hiring a Senior Researcher or Researchers

Lakeside Labs is a research and innovation company driven by the vision to create solutions for networked systems using concepts from self-organization. Lakeside Labs currently offers senior researcher or researcher positions on the following topics:

  • Industrial Sensor Networks
  • Multi-Robot Systems
  • Sustainable Mobility

Lakeside Labs is committed to increasing the number of female scientific staff and specifically asks female researchers to apply for this job.

The application deadline is November 30, 2019. The starting date will be in January 2020. To learn how to apply, follow this link. 

 

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, 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 honor people working outside North America. Prof. Pancake writes that even though nothing would make ACM committees happier than to recognize 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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