ACM Europe TPC Comments on Digital Green Certificates

ACM’s Europe Technology Policy Committee submitted a formal Statement on the Development and Deployment of Digital Green Certificates to the Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) prior to its hearing on the European Commission’s Proposal regarding “Digital Green Certificates.” European authorities are currently and rapidly attempting to develop an internationally interoperable travel document in both paper and electronic form before the upcoming European holiday season. The Europe TPC Statement recommends that the European Union:

  • work with the World Health Organization to develop an international Public Key Directory (PKD), rather than an EU standard;
  • develop Certificate technology and policy to ensure that information disclosure is proportionate to the immediate need for that information;
  • prioritize the protection of EU citizens from “data inference”; and
  • maximally limit Certificate data retention.

This Statement was also shared with the Chair of the intra-Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel, with which Europe TPC is seeking to establish an advisory relationship.

 

ACM Presents Special Awards to Regeneron Science Fair Finalists

 ACM presented Special Awards to finalists in the 2021 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world’s largest high school science research competition, held virtually May 16-21, 2021. Nearly 2,000 high school students competed to reach the finals. Each year, organizations representing government, industry and education across a wide variety of scientific disciplines serve as Special Award Sponsors, providing awards, scholarships, internships and other prizes to student finalists.

In addition to monetary prizes, ACM also provides complimentary ACM Student Lite Memberships for the duration of the award recipients’ undergraduate education. This includes subscriptions to XRDS (Crossroads), an online version of Communications of the ACM, and full access to the ACM Digital Library. The 2021 winners are:

First Award of $4,000

  • Fusing LiDAR and Camera Data for Advanced Context Recognition in Autonomous Navigation Sensory Systems through Multidimensional Deep Neural Network Architectures, Emily SIhan Zhang, Cherry Creek High School, Englewood, Colorado, US

Second Award of $3,000

  • A Novel Method of Creating Block Ciphers Provably Immune to Linear and Differential Cryptanalysis, Szymon Perlicki, Szkola Podstawowa, Wroclaw, Poland

Third Award of $1,500

  • Development of an AI-Powered Powered Facial-cue Control Module, Daniel Shen, William G. Enloe High School, Cary, North Carolina, US

Fourth Award of $500

  • Limited Query Black-box Adversarial Attacks in the Real World, Hristo Todorov, High School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Kyustendil, Bulgaria
  • Towards a Greener AI: Structured Pruning of Convolutional Neural Networks at Initialization, Sydney Faux, Pace Academy, Atlanta, GA, US
  • A Hash Algorithm for Directory Tree, Linzhou Jiang, Chengdu No. 7 High School, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

See the full list of winners here and watch a recording of ACM’s contribution to the 2021 ISEF Special Awards ceremony.

 

Featured ACM Distinguished Speaker: Sebastian Fischmeister

Sebastian Fischmeister is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in Computer Science from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, and his PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Salzburg. He performs systems research at the intersection of software technology, distributed systems, and formal methods. His preferred application area is in safety-critical embedded real-time systems in the domain of automotive systems, aerospace, and medical devices. Key highlights of his research include a framework for Real-time Ethernet, a dynamic binary instrumentation tool for time-aware systems, and real-time capable runtime monitoring. Sebastian is currently working on data analysis for assessing the safety and security of mission-critical systems.

 

Upcoming Online Conferences and Events

 SIGMOD/PODS 2021, June 20 to 25

The International Conference on Management of Data is a leading international forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences. Workshops will cover Big Data in Emergent Distributed Environments; Exploiting AI for Data Management; Data Management for End-to-End Machine Learning; Data Management on New Hardware; and Graph Data Management and Systems and Network Data Analytics.

 PLDI 2021, June 20 to 26

PLDI is the premier forum in programming languages and programming systems research, covering design, implementation, theory, applications, and performance. Co-located conferences will cover history of programming languages, memory management, and languages, compilers, tools and theory of embedded systems. Workshops will address array-oriented programming; programming languages for quantum computing; state of the art in program analysis; and more.

 WebSci 2021, June 21 to 25

The 13th ACM Conference on Web Science will explore “Globalisation, Inclusion and the Web in the Context of COVID,” in recognition of the divides that still exist and emerge in various online environments. Keynote speakers are Deen Freelon (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); entrepreneur and internet activist Martha Lane Fox; Matthew S. Weber (Rutgers University); Daniel J. Weitzner (MIT); and Jennifer Zhu Scott (The Commons Project).

STOC 2021, June 21 to 25

The 53rd ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing will be part of a five-day TheoryFest with an expanded program of papers and poster sessions, as well as invited talks, tutorials and workshops spotlighting clustering, robust streaming, sketching and sampling, and women in the field. Keynote speakers are 2020 ACM Turing Award laureate Alfred Aho (Columbia University) John Martinis (Silicon Quantum Computing and UC Santa Barbara), Kobbi Nissim (Georgetown University), and Toniann Pitassi (University of Toronto).

IDC 2021, June 24 to 30

ACM Interaction Design and Children is the premier international conference for researchers, educators and practitioners to share ideas on inclusive child-centered design, learning and interaction. Workshops will address accessible AI, justice-centered design, and more. Courses will cover sonic interfaces, the CCI UX Playbook, and more. Jenny Radesky (University of Michigan) will deliver the keynote, on “Moving Beyond ‘Screen Time’: Advocating for a Child-Centered Digital Environment.”