ACM-W Europe September 2020 Newsletter

 

In this issue:

 

womENcourage 2020: Online, 24-27th September

Less than two weeks left till the womENcourage 2020. Registration closes on the 18th of September! Do not miss your chance to participate in this unique event. You will be hearing from an impressive line-up of keynote speakers!

The participants will be welcomed by Vafa Kazdal, Vice-Rector of Academic Affairs at ADA University; Gabriela Kotsis, ACM President, and Ruth Lennon, ACM-W Europe chair. Nuria Oliver, Chief Scientist at Data-Pop Alliance will present the Data Science to Fight the COVID-19 Pandemic: the Valencia Case. Prof. Cecilia Mascolo, Cambridge University will describe the progress in Health Diagnostics through Audio Signals Collection and Analysis. Georgia Koutrika, Research Director at Athena Research Center, will discuss Democratizing Data Access through Intelligent Data Exploration Tools. Claudia Pohlink, Head of AI at T-Labs, will question Who Makes Wiser Decisions? Men, Women or Machines? Silvana Badaloni, University of Padova, will talk on Gender Fairness of Machine Learning Techniques. They will be joined by Prof Sarit Kraus, Bar-Ilan University, who is an expert on the development of intelligent agents that can interact proficiently with people and with robots. Check the details of the program here.

 

 

Blog Series: Reflections on womENcourage 2019

Our blog post this month is from Praveen Mathew, who is currently pursuing responsibilities as a Test Automation Engineer in Eurofins science (Ireland) Ltd and in parallel, working on his thesis as part of MSc cyber-security program at Letterkenny Institute of technology.

His visit to Rome and womENcourage was awe-inspiring.

“I, being the only male in the group, was both excited for the fact that we would be visiting the magnificent city of Rome and nervous thinking what it would be like to attend a women dominant event. I was all ready for a roller-coaster ride.”

After a truly exciting hackathon and conference experience:  

“Once the flight took off, I looked out through the window and told myself that, there are no women or men in the IT world, there are only enthusiastic engineers who want to make the world a better place to live in.”

Read more from Praveen here.

 

On Wikipedia: Elena Ferrari

In March 2020, to celebrate International Women’s day, some members of our team started contributing to English Wikipedia with articles about women that are in computing, and from as many European countries as possible. This month, we expanded the entry about Elena Ferrari, who is a Professor of Computer Science and Director of the STRICT Social Lab at the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Varese, Italy. In July, she was featured as part of People of ACM.

Join us in contributing to Wikipedia by creating new or helping edit existing articles.

 

ACM-W Europe Social Media Highlights

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

  1.  A very comprehensive article on the cybersecurity gender gap and reveal more than 35 initiatives including European ones that are helping to close it.
  2. Announcement of ACM-W Europe August newsletter. 
  3. ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for HPC-Based COVID-19 Research Call for Nominations. Nominations are still accepted through October 8, 2020. 

 

On Twitterthe top tweet was about the PhD and Postdoc positions at TU Wien.

Our top media tweet was the Call for ACM fellows. 

We hope some of you have applied for these great opportunities. 

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

 

Announcements

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.

 

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. 

ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for HPC-Based COVID-19 Research Call for Nominations

ACM has established a special category of the ACM Gordon Bell Prize to recognize outstanding research achievements that use high performance computing (HPC) applications to understand the COVID-19 pandemic, including the understanding of its spread.  Nominations can now be submitted via an online submission form and will be accepted through October 8, 2020.

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 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.

 

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