ACM-W Europe October 2021 Newsletter

 

In this issue:

 

You are a hero, and we would like to hear from you

I have been very lucky to meet many members of the ACM-W Europe over the years. During lock-down I have not had quite the same opportunity. I would love to meet you, as each and everyone of you are heroes for going out there and pursuing the  career of your choice.  It can be hard for many reasons but we all have our own successes too. For me, my success is strongly underpinned by my wonderful support network. They are my family, and friends in tech who encourage me every day. We don’t have to be the CEO or CISO of a large company to be a hero to ourselves and to others. It can simply be that you passed your course even though it was hard for you; it can be that you are in a job that you love; it can be that you mentored someone and now they are doing well. I would love to hear your stories, to meet you and to learn about the members of the ACM-W Europe. Please get in touch. Drop me a line or two about what makes you proud to be you. Please email me at RLennon@acm.org.

Ruth G. Lennon

Chair of the ACM-W Europe

 

Celebrating the success of womENcourageTM 2021

 

The womENcourageTM 2021, which took place between 22-24 September 2021, was a brilliant success. The slogan of the event this year is “Bridging Communities to Foster Innovation”. There were three days of inspirational speakers, thought-provoking discussions, exchanging best practices, and practical tips for building bridges between businesses,  academia, not-for-profit and public institutions, inviting them to co-create together.

 

260 people from different walks of life, from more than 38 countries, and each continent except Antarctica attended womENcourageTM 2021. Powerful and inspiring voices of our speakers, therefore, carried through all timezones of our planet. 

On Day 1 and Day 2, the participants were inspired by our invited speakers during Keynotes and Panels. Our speakers included Margaret-Anne Storey (Canada Research Chair in Human and Social Aspects of Software Engineering, University of Victoria), Jaya Baloo (Chief Information Security Officer, Avast), Amina Crooks (AI Institute Director, Deloitte, Australia), Sara Polak (AI Ambassador prg.ai, Founder of Paioneers Lab Paralelni polis, Director czech.global, Founder of Anthropologica), and Anja Volk (Associate Professor, Utrecht University, Netherlands).

The highlight of Day 2 was the opportunity to interact with the authors of accepted Posters, who have much to say to the theme of the conference, “Bridging communities to foster innovation”. They gave lightning talks about their posters and discussed roundtables on the themes bridging the poster topics. The highlight of Day 3 was the Hackathon, where participants enjoyed an interactive playful time with people from all around Europe or joined us for the final presentations to see the projects on the theme of the conference.

Finally, in each of Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3, people took advantage of the opportunity to meet the partners of the conference within the Career Fair or insightful industrial panel.

The online platform will be open for exactly one month after the conference, i.e. till October 24, 2021. Use this opportunity to watch the recordings of the sessions. In the case of Zoom Stages, the link is at the same place as the “Join Zoom” link for each session. For the Main Stage, you can navigate to the recording from the Detailed program via the “Rec” link. Please note that it is not allowed to share the recordings outside the platform.

Congratulations to the Prague team, and heartfelt thanks for their passionate commitment to the organization of womENcourage celebration, and we cannot have done this without our supporters. womENcourage2022 will be hosted in Larnaca, Cyprus! We already can’t wait.

 

 

Blog: Breath of Fresh Air: Diversity Heroes – Mary Sheeran

This month’s guest is Mary Sheeran (in white, standing in the front row), a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the Chalmers University of Technology. She has pioneered the use of functional domain-specific languages in hardware design and verification and in resource-aware parallel programming. She is a founder member of IFIP Working Group 2.8 on Functional Programming. A couple of years ago, her university asked its staff “how would you like to change Chalmers?” and the answer was obvious to her: increase gender equality, aiming for excellence. The resulting proposal was funded – approximately 30 million euros –  and work on the Genie initiative began in 2019, with Mary as the Vice Director. Thank you, Mary, for writing for us a brilliant article on Improving gender balance in academia: a computer scientist’s view. 

Here is an excerpt from Mary’s article:

“Much of my own research has been about the problem of designing hardware circuits so that they are guaranteed to meet a specification, rather than coming up with a design and then trying to prove it correct after the fact, as is the current practice. This is an important problem both in theory and in practice, and neither I nor anyone else has solved it fully, yet, though many clever people are working on it both in academia and in companies like Intel and Google. But still, I have to say that it is a very easy, well-defined problem compared to figuring out how a department like mine works, in Chalmers and in the world, and how to make it all work better with any certainty. It is tempting to retreat to the lovely, abstract world of research in hardware design, but I can’t, or at least not entirely! I am faced with a complex, fascinating and important problem, so how can I resist? And the future of our field is at stake! Please join me on this quest.[Feel free to email me at mary dot sheeran at chalmers dot se.]”

Read more at our blog.

 

Wish to organize the 2023 womENcourage?

You can still apply with your proposals to host womENcourage 2023.

In the first stage, all you need to submit is an Expressions of Interest (EoI) (The links for: EoI submission template; EoI submission form).

Submitting an EoI does not constitute a firm commitment to hosting. It is a first step towards a conversation with ACM-W Europe which will help you navigate the process of applying to be a host venue, by thinking early about what you need to have in place to fulfill the requirements to host the event. 

After, you will be invited to submit Full Hosting Proposals (Here are the links to the call documents: Full Proposal template; Full Proposal submission form)

 

ACM-W Europe Social Media Highlights

Not on social media? Not a problem. In September 2021, our most popular posts on Facebook were about:

  1. The countdown to womENcourageTM 2021.
  2. Announcement for our September newsletter.
  3. Our celebration message for Sept. 15-Oct 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month in the US.

On Twitter, the top tweets were all about the Webinar on “Getting Recognised by ACM Awards and Honors” by ACM Europe Council. The top media tweet was the Countdown to womENcourageTM 2021.

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

 

Announcements and News

N2Women: STARS in Computer Networking and Communications

There are a lot of amazing women in the networking/communications field. To honour some of these women, N2Women publishes an annual list of “N2Women: STARS in Computer Networking and Communications”. Please nominate one or more women for the 2021 star list!

 Who do you think should be on the star list of networking and communications leaders? Who amazes you and inspires you?  Who has made significant contributions to our field?

 Eligibility:

  • A self-defined female researcher in the networking and communications field from academia or industry.
  • A person who earned her PhD before December 10, 2011 (over 10 year’s experience after PhD completion).
  • A person who has outstanding research outcomes and/or service contribution in the networking and communications field.
  • A person who is currently not serving and also did not serve as N2Women board member in 2020 and 2021 (in order to avoid conflicts of interest). Board List available at: https://n2women.comsoc.org/officers/

 Important Dates:

  • Nomination Deadline: November 10th, 2021 (11:59 anywhere on Earth)
  • Winner Announcement: December 10th, 2021 (Ada Lovelace’s birthday)

Nomination Link here.

Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions: Submission Deadlines

ACM Student Research Competitions (SRCs), sponsored by Microsoft Research, 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 presented at SIGCOMM 2021. The next conferences accepting submissions are:

Learn more about competitions on the SRC submissions page and SRC guidelines for students.

 

ACM-W’s Celebrating Technology Leaders Webinar Series 

By highlighting successful technical women leading diverse careers in the technology industry, ACM-W’s webinar series, Celebrating Technology Leaders, aims to inform students and early-career professionals about the multitude of career options open to them. The latest episode will be on Machine Learning Careers: Looking Beyond the Hype aiming the understand the gap between the popular (mis)understanding of ML potential and what the tools can actually deliver today? Join ACM-W “Celebrating Technology Leaders” on October 20th at 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT  to hear a panel discussion with successful ML professionals, Dafna Shahaf (Associate Professor, Data Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Dhivya Chinnappa (ML Research Scientist, Thomson Reuters), Fatma Tarlaci, Ph.D. (Machine Learning Scientist, OpenTeams), and Koyuki Nakamori (Head of Machine Learning, Headspace).[Register Now]

To watch the recorded webinars, visit the YouTube playlist.

 

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, dispelling 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. Source: Dispelling Common Myths About ACM Awards and Honors.

Call for Nominations for Fran Allen Mentorship Award

ACM announces a new award that highlights the value of mentoring in the development of computing professionals. The ACM Frances E. Allen Award for Outstanding Mentoring emphasizes contributions in mentoring students and young professionals from diverse communities. Please consider nominating a deserving individual for this unique award that promotes diversity in computing. Nominations are due December 15.

 

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

Upcoming Deadlines:

Doctoral Dissertation: October 31 (for dissertations being translated into English: November 30).

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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