ACM-W Europe November 2022 Newsletter

 

In this issue:

 

womENcourage™ – Celebration of Women in Computing

Join us in Trondheim, Norway on 20-22 September 2023

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. Let’s meet the general chairs: professors Kerstin Bach and Letizia Jaccheri.

Kerstin Bach is a professor at the Department of Computer Science. Her core competence field is Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. She is currently the program manager of the NorwAI research centre, deputy head of the Data and Artificial Intelligence group and part of the Norwegian Open AI Lab. 

Kerstin was awarded her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Her main research interests are data-driven decision support systems as well as knowledge-intensive Case-Based Reasoning. She is the chair of the German Society for Computer Science’s Special Interest Group on Knowledge Management and a board member of the Norwegian AI society.

The main focus of her work is methods for applied artificial intelligence. While the application domains differ, she is investigating how to make knowledge and experience available through intelligent systems. Moreover, how to build systems that support complex, knowledge-intensive decisions using heterogeneous data sources. She has been the project manager of the selfBACK EU project that developed an e-Health application for low back pain patients.

She enjoys discussing AI methodologies and applications with fellow researchers, but more importantly teaching it to students and bringing it into multidisciplinary projects and thereby shaping the new digital world.

 

Letizia Jaccheri is professor at the Department of Computer Science. Jaccheri’s research is on: software engineering for society with focus on inclusion (See link for more information including PhD, postdoctoral, and master students). She has organized several conferences, like ACM Interaction Design and Children and is active in the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering community.

She is Action Chair for EUGAIN CA19122; Project Leader of IDUN; chair of Trondheim ACM’s Women in Computing Chapter; Principal investigator in projects e-ladda, Craft and SENOBR.

See Software for a better society for more information about her research and this link for her blog, books, podcast, and thoughts.

 

Please follow the conference website for updates throughout the year and details for participants.

 

In Memoriam: Valerie Issarny

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to Valerie Issarny, an esteemed scientist and colleague. Valerie honored the ACM Europe Council serving as its Chair from October 2021 until her death. Valerie fought her disease with extraordinary courage until her last moment and we admired her strength. We will sincerely miss her. We are very grateful to Valerie for her many contributions over the years to ACM, the ACM Europe Council, and to the middleware and distributed systems communities.

 

ACM-W Europe 10-year Anniversary

This year 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 are excited to announce the ACM-W Europe 10th Anniversary Celebration to highlight the organization’s activities on its mission to support, celebrate, and advocate for the full engagement of women in all aspects of the computing field in Europe and beyond.

Register now for free here to receive the link to the Zoom session.

Celebrating our members

It is fitting that the 10 year anniversary 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. This month we are thanking Erika Abraham RWTH Aachen University.

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

In the years 2018-2019 I have been leading the Working Group “Women in Informatics Research and Education (WIRE)” of Informatics Europe. To strengthen the interaction and to better join forces, ACM-WE and WIRE mutually include representatives in their committees and as WIRE leader, I started to be involved in ACM-WE in this role.

Why did you join?

In addition to the reason just mentioned, I highly value the work of ACM-WE which deserves the support of all of us. It is wonderful how many great activities are initiated and carried out by ACM-WE members to support girls and women in Computer Science. All these actors manage to do this work on top of their everyday workload, typically without any compensation. By joining and spreading the word about its activities. I hope to contribute to increase the visibility and the impact of this network and the individuals behind the scenes.

How are you associated with the ACM-W Europe?

I am deeply involved in the activities of the WIRE Working Group, as well as in a related European COST Action named Eugain (European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics). Being associated with ACM-WE allows me to build bridges between these activities and those of ACM-WE, such that we can exploit each others’ experiences and strengthen each others’ impact.

How has the ACM-W Europe impacted you?

ACM-WE helped me to get in contact with amazing women from different fields of Computer Science. We can learn a lot from each other and support each other in different ways.

 

 

Blog – The pandemic impact on remote work and remote conferences by Jessica Oo

Each year we meet incredible women at womENcourage™ celebrations. We ask womENcourage™ participants to tell their stories in blog posts. We continue 2022 with Jessica Oo who was studying Pharmaceutical & Industrial Chemistry at the University of Limerick in Ireland when she participated in the event. She was aiming to pursue a part-time master’s degree in the future in the area of Project Management.

“When the pandemic first made headlines in western media around December 2020, no one could have imagined the longstanding impact of the deadly virus. […] While the pandemic undoubtedly had negative consequences for the working world, it challenged the status quo and introduced the global workforce to a new approach of workplace interaction. Staff morale was boosted with the increased amount of personal time that came with work-from-home. Online conferencing became more common and integral to connecting teams across the world. With governments easing restrictions, finding the delicate balance between work-from-home and on-site hours will be key to engaging with employees, especially those who joined their company during the transition to full-time work-from-home.”


Read the entire blog on our blog.

 

 

ACM-W Europe Social Media Highlights

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

  1. The October newsletter.
  2. The blog post from Banovsha Isgandarova, previous participant at womENcourage.
  3. The announcement that womENcourage 2023 will take place in Norway.

 

On Twitter, the top tweet was about the call for organising the womENcourage 2024, and the top media tweet about the deadline for the Rising Star Awards.

 

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

 

Announcements and News

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.

 

The Computer Vision Centre (CVC) has a vacancy for a postdoc to work in the frontier between document intelligence and privacy preserving learning.

The position is linked to the European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI (ELSA) project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.

The successful candidate is expected to contribute to the design and development of AI solutions for document understanding, and in particular on Document Visual Question Answering systems, employing privacy preserving techniques and infrastructures set up by the ELSA project.

The candidate is expected to have extensive experience in at least one of: document intelligence and/or private and robust collaborative learning (differential privacy, federated learning), and an appetite to learn.

Deadline: vacancy will remain open until a suitable candidate has been hired.

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.

Nominations Deadlines:

ACM Senior Member  3 December 2022 Details here.
ACM-W Rising Star 30 November 2022 Details here.

 

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.

 

ACM-W Europe Website                           ACM-W Europe Blog                         ACM-W Europe Facebook