Call for Nominations for Fran Allen 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, 2021.
ACM Europe Tech Policy Committee Comments on Digital Health Data Services and Proposed AI Regulations
In comments filed in the European Commission’s Health Data Space consultation, ACM’s Europe Technology Policy Committee cautioned that the pervasive deployment of AI algorithms could lead to the de-skilling of healthcare professionals, warning that “permitting a human ‘the last word’ in such systems is not sufficient to address this issue. What is needed are real human/AI partnerships.”
ACM Europe TPC also provided Comments to the European Commission on a Proposal by the European Council and Parliament for a new regulation establishing harmonised rules for the use of artificial intelligence. Key Committee recommendations address: protecting public health and safety, assuring personal privacy, and closing the current scientific “skills gap” through informatics education while creating a diverse workforce.
Featured ACM Distinguished Speaker: Athena Vakali
Athena Vakali is Professor of the Informatics Department at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where she leads the Data and Web Science Research Lab. Athena has served as Program Chair for the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence since 2019. She is a founding member of the Greek ACM-W Chapter and a mentor of the AUTH ACM-W Student Chapter at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. For more information on Athena, please visit her DSP speaker information page and read her People of ACM interview.
Upcoming Conferences and Events
HLF 2021, September 20 to 23 (online)
The 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum will look and feel very different from prior HLFs, however the fundamental principle remains constant: some of the brightest minds in mathematics and computer science come together for interdisciplinary exchange. This year, 19 ACM A.M. Turing Award laureates
and three ACM Prize recipients will participate in a program that includes laureate discussions, panel discussions and new components, such as the laureate debate and speed-networking. The timely Hot Topic for this year is “Spread of Infectious Diseases.” Workshops will include a pitch session to science news and magazine editors, and other topics.
Tapia 2021, September 14 to 18 (online)
The ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing features panels, workshops, poster sessions, networking opportunities and a career fair. Tapia will bring together undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities. Plenary speakers are Omar U. Flórez (Twitter Cortex); Jenny Lay-Flurrie (Microsoft); NASA astronaut John B. Herrington; and Cecelia Aragon (University of Washington).
UbiComp 2021, September 21 to 26 (online)
The 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing will feature workshops on mental health; emotion sensing; pervasive systems; ubiquitous health monitoring; computing for well being; and more. UbiComp is collocated with the ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), which includes a design exhibition and student competition.
womENcourage 2021, September 22 to 24 (online)
womENcourage 2021 will be virtually hosted by czechitas in Prague, Czech Republic. Keynote speakers and panel discussions will include Jaya Balloo (Avast), Justine Sass (UNESCO), Margaret-Anne Storey (University of Victoria) and Danica Kragic (Royal Institute of Technology). Conference participants can attend ask-me-anything sessions with some of the speakers, workshops, tutorials, a hackathon and a career fair.
RecSys 2021, September 27 to October 1, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (hybrid)
The 15th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems will be a hybrid in-person/virtual event, with sessions livestreamed and recorded for remote access. Workshops will cover topics including Graph Neural Networks for Recommendation and Search, News Recommendation and Analytics, Podcast Recommendations, Recommender Systems for Human Resources, and much more. Industry talks will feature a wide range of speakers from AstraZenica to Salesforce.
MMSys 2021, September 28 to October 1, Istanbul, Turkey (hybrid)
The ACM Multimedia Systems Conference provides a forum for researchers to present and share their latest research findings in multimedia systems. Sessions will cover Detecting Cheapfakes; Multimedia in Outdoor and Mobile Environments; video streaming technologies; and much more. Keynotes will be delivered by Caitlin Kalinowski (Facebook), Chris Bregler (Google), and Sriram Sethuraman and Deepthi Nandakumar (Amazon Prime Video).
