2020 ACM A.M. Turing Award Announcement
ACM Announces 2020 Turing Award Recipients
ACM has named Alfred Aho, Lawrence Gussman Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, and Jeffrey Ullman, Stanford W. Ascherman Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and CEO of Gradiance Corporation, recipients of the 2020 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation, and for synthesizing these results and those of others in their highly influential books, which educated generations of computer scientists.
Aho and Ullman's Notable Books
Aho and Ullman's foundational book with John Hopcroft, The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms (1974), created the conceptual framework for teaching algorithms in the standard computer science curriculum, and for presenting and analyzing new algorithms developed by the research community. Their definitive 1977 book on compiler technology, Principles of Compiler Design (nicknamed the "Dragon Book") and its subsequent editions became the bibles of compiler design.
ACM has recently learned of concerns regarding statements made in the past by Jeffrey Ullman, one of this year’s Turing Award recipients. These statements do not reflect the views of ACM. ACM is committed to diversity and inclusion and will work to improve our implementation of these principles in everything ACM does.
ACM SIG Elections - Voting
On 2 April, members of the following SIGs (who were in good standing as of 15 March 2021) were sent voting information from Election Services Corporation (ESC), a third party that is conducting the election: SIGACCESS, SIGACT, SIGMIS, SIGPLAN.
Please contact ESC if you have not received an email. If ACM does not have an email address on file, members will receive the voting information via postal mail. Ballots are due by 14 May at 16:00 UTC. You can view the candidate slate here.
CRA/CCC Announces CIFellows 2021 Program
The Computing Research Association and Computing Community Consortium are inviting applications for a new Computing Innovation Fellows cohort for 2021. This program recognizes the continued disruption to hiring in academic institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be PhD graduates in computing to support the computing research pipeline. A webinar will be held April 15 for interested community members. Deadline for applications will be in early May; check the CIFellows website for details and updates.
Meet Alison Clear
Alison Clear is an Associate Professor at Eastern Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand. She was recently recognized with the ACM SIGCSE Lifetime Service to the Computer Science Education Community Award. Clear is Co-chair (along with Allen Parrish of the University of Alabama) of the CC2020 Task Force, which recently published the ACM/IEEE-CS report Computing Curricula 2020: Paradigms for Future Computing Curricula (CC2020). The report is the first comprehensive update of the ACM/IEEE-CS curricula guidelines for baccalaureate degrees in 15 years.
Introducing ACM Focus
ACM Focus is a new way to explore the breadth and variety of ACM content, and to stay current with the latest trends in your technical community. ACM Focus consists of a set of AI-curated custom feeds by subject, each serving up a focused set of the latest relevant ACM content that provides overall awareness of relevant ACM activities, people, talks and a variety of published works. Examples of topic categories include AI, Web, Applied Computing, Society, Graphics, and more. The feeds are built in an automated fashion and are refined as you interact with them. Explore ACM Focus today!
New Open Access Journal: Collective Intelligence
Collective Intelligence is a transdisciplinary open access journal devoted to advancing the theoretical and empirical understanding of group performance in diverse systems, from adaptive matter to cellular and neural systems to animal societies to all types of human organizations to hybrid AI-human teams and nanobot swarms. Visit https://colint.acm.org for more information or to submit your manuscript. Collective Intelligence is co-published with SAGE, and in collaboration with Nesta.
Meet Michelle Zhou
Michelle Zhou is Co-founder and CEO of Juji, Inc., which develops cognitive artificial intelligence assistants in the form of chatbots. She has authored more than 100 scientific publications on subjects including conversational AI, personality analytics, and interactive visual analytics of big data. An ACM Distinguished Member, Zhou serves as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems.
ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing Launches
TQC publishes papers and select surveys on topics in quantum computing and quantum information science. The journal targets the quantum computer science community with a focus on the theory and practice of quantum computing. Scope includes: models; algorithms and complexity; computing architecture; principles and methods of fault-tolerant quantum computation; design automation; and more. The inaugural issue includes a collection of five outstanding research papers that capture the breadth and sophistication of quantum computing research.
Discover the Latest "Selects," Shortlists of Learning Resources Curated by Experts
ACM Selects are themed shortlists curated by subject matter experts for both serious and emerging computing professionals, with the goal of providing new ways to discover relevant resources, either through ACM or authenticated by ACM-affiliated specialists. The latest Selects cover Getting Started with Microservices, Getting Started with Networks, People in Computing #5: Women Who Shaped the Internet, People in Computing #6: Women in Security and Entrepreneurship, People in Computing #7: Women in Hardware and Programming Languages and AI for Robotics
Virtual Conferences: A Guide to Best Practices
In March 2020 ACM formed a Presidential Task Force (PTF) to help conference organizers transition their events to online. The PTF is working on a guide to offer practical advice and shed light on the largely unfamiliar territory of online conferencing.
The report, available here, includes pointers to a live document with additional resources. We welcome comments, suggestions and experience reports from the community.
Listen to ACM ByteCast!
ACM's Practitioner Board has created ACM ByteCast, a new podcast series in which hosts Rashmi Mohan and Jessica Bell interview researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice. In each monthly episode, guests will share their experiences, the lessons they’ve learned, and their own visions for the future of computing.
Listen to the latest episode featuring Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab and Director of the Camera Culture research group, who holds more than 90 patents in computer vision, computational health, sensors, and imaging, and subscribe to the series wherever you get your podcasts.
ACM-CHIL 2021, April 8 to 9 (online)
The ACM Conference on Health, Inference, and Learning targets a cross-disciplinary representation of clinicians and researchers in machine learning, health policy, causality, fairness, and other related areas. Keynotes will be delivered by Regina Barzilay (MIT), Narges Razavian (New York University), Mark Sendak (Duke University), Alan Karthikesalingam (Google), Maia Jacobs (Northwestern University) and Tianxi Cai (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health).
IUI 2021, April 13 to 17 (online)
The 26th Annual Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces is where the human-computer interaction community meets the AI community, with contributions from related fields such as psychology, behavioral science, cognitive science, computer graphics, design, and the arts. Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland) will present a tutorial on Human-Centered AI, an approach combining research on AI algorithms with user experience design methods.
CODASPY 2021, April 26 to 28 (online)
The ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control's Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy will feature co-located workshops on Security and Privacy Analytics; Secure and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems; and Software Defined Networks & Network Function Virtualization Security. Panels will address "Is there a Security Mindset and Can It Be Taught?" and "AI for Security and Security for AI." Danfeng (Daphne) Yao (Virginia Tech) and David Evans (University of Virginia) will deliver keynotes.
The Decline of Computers as a General Purpose Technology
Neil Thompson and Svenja Spanuth argue that the unwinding of the economic cycle of the "general purpose technology" results in less marketing growth and slower technical progress. As CPU improvement slows, economic incentives push users toward specialized processors. This fragmentation means that parts of computing will progress at different rates. Read more in their contributed article, "Decline of Computers as a General Purpose Technology," in the March 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM.
Differential Privacy: The Pursuit of Protections by Default
As privacy violations have become rampant and calls for better measures to protect sensitive, personally identifiable information have primarily resulted in bureaucratic policies satisfying almost no one, differential privacy is emerging as a potential solution. In “Differential Privacy: The Pursuit of Protections by Default,” a Case Study in ACM Queue, Google’s Damien Desfontaines and Miguel Guevara reflect with Jim Waldo and Terry Coatta on the engineering challenges that lie ahead for differential privacy, as well as what remains to be done to achieve their ultimate goal of providing privacy protection by default.
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Lifelong Learning
ACM offers lifelong learning resources including online books from O'Reilly, online courses from Skillsoft, TechTalks on the hottest topics in computing and IT, and more.
ACM Updates Code of Ethics
ACM recently updated its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. The revised Code of Ethics addresses the significant advances in computing technology since the 1992 version, as well as the growing pervasiveness of computing in all aspects of society. To promote the Code throughout the computing community, ACM created a booklet, which includes the Code, case studies that illustrate how the Code can be applied to situations that arise in everyday practice and suggestions on how the Code can be used in educational settings and in companies and organizations. Download a PDF of the ACM Code booklet.