HLF 2020 Virtual Conference Features Interviews with ACM Award Recipients, Hot Topic Panel on Healthcare
The 2020 Heidelberg Laureate Forum, held virtually on 21-25 September, provides an informal venue for 200 selected young researchers to exchange ideas with renowned laureates in mathematics and computer science. Recently-elected ACM President Gabriele Kotsis opened the Forum and interviewed 2019 ACM A.M. Turing Award laureates Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan, and 2019 ACM Prize in Computing recipient David Silver, on September 21. On September 22, “Health, Technology and Data: Which Is the Best Way to Go?” included discussions by panelists including 2018 ACM Prize in Computing recipient Shwetak Patel. Visit the HLF YouTube channel to watch these recorded sessons. See the full program here.
Europe’s Informatics for All Coalition Presents to European Commission
On 9 September, Informatics for All (I4All) steering committee members Enrico Nardelli, President of Informatics Europe, and Austeja Trinkunaite, Secretary General of CEPIS, were among eight experts invited to present to members of the European Commission regarding the revision of the Digital Education Action Plan (DEAP), which supports the development of digital competences in European Union countries. Formed in 2013 by the ACM Europe Council, CEPIS, and Informatics Europe, the I4All coalition advocates to include the principles of Informatics in school curricula at all levels (see the 2019 Rome declaration).
Nardelli and Trinkunaite discussed the I4All position paper developed at a March 2020 workshop with European Commission representatives, which presents evidence for the need and outlines implementation challenges regarding curriculum, teacher education, and pedagogical research.
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission concluded the meeting noting: “It is really a million Euro question: how to make sure that we have sufficient skills not only to use digital tools but also to construct them. “Echoing comments made by Nardelli, she stated: “This is not just about having a technical skill, it’s about bildung“—part of a cultural education that ensures students fully understand the science of Informatics, so they have the insights to be the architects and scientists of our next-generation digital world.
ACM Joins International Committee on Publication Ethics
ACM recently signed on as a member of the international organization Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), whose aim is to educate and support editors, authors, and publishers, with the goal of moving publishing culture toward one where ethical practices become the norm. COPE provides a widely-recognized industry standard of policies and practices for handling cases of ethical misconduct, and ACM will use these in its investigations as necessary. Being a member of COPE will give ACM members, readers, editors, and reviewers further confidence that ACM publications are dedicated to ensuring that ethical publishing practices are promoted and upheld. It will also assist ACM in adjudicating ethics disputes between or among publishers.
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. The ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research will be presented in 2020 and 2021.
Recipients will be selected based on performance and innovation in their computational methods, in addition to their contributions toward understanding the nature, spread and/or treatment of the disease. Financial support of the $10,000 cash prize that accompanies the award is provided by Gordon Bell, a pioneer in high performance computing and researcher emeritus at Microsoft Research.
Recipients will be offered the opportunity to present their work at The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC 2020) and have their research published in The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications (IJHPCA).
The new COVID-19-focused award is a complement to the longstanding ACM Gordon Bell Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement in high performance computing applications. Nominations can now be submitted via an online submission form and will be accepted through October 8, 2020.
Featured ACM Distinguished Speaker: Regina Bernhaupt
Regina Bernhaupt is an Associate Researcher at Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), France, and is Director of User Experience Research at ruwido. Her research focuses on understanding the ecosystem of TV entertainment and games and how to design and develop new forms of interaction enabling an enhanced overall user experience. She recently edited a book on game user experience. Regina is a member of the SIGCHI Executive Committee as VP for Membership and Communication, and served on its Conference Management Committee, helping to establish the CHI Play conference.
For more information on Regina, please visit her DSP speaker information page.
Upcoming Online Conferences
PACT 2020, October 5 to 7 (online)
The Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques brings together researchers to present and discuss innovative research. Scheduled keynoters are Rick L. Stevens (Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago), “Overview of HPC and AI Computing for COVID-19 in the US”; Sarita Adve (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “Scalable Specialization: Architectures, Interfaces, and Applications”; and Bradford L. Chamberlain (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), “Compiling Chapel: Keys to Making Parallel Programming Productive at Scale.”
ICAIF 2020, October 15 to 16 (online)
The inaugural ACM Conference on AI in Finance aims to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines to share technical advances and insights on the effects of AI on the finance world. Scheduled keynote speakers are Marcos López de Prado (True Positive Technologies); Charles Elkan (Goldman Sachs); ACM Fellows Yolanda Gil (University of Southern California) and Jeannette Wing (Columbia University); Michael Kearns (University of Pennsylvania); and Susan Tibbs (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).
CSCW 2020, October 17 to 20 (online)
The ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing explores the technical, social, material, and theoretical challenges of designing technology to support collaborative work and life activities. Keynote speakers Maryam Zaringhalam (National Library of Medicine) and Afua Bruce (DataKind) will open and close the conference. CSCW will be co-located with the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology; programming for UIST will extend to October 23.
FODS 2020, October 19 to 20 (online)
The ACM-IMS Foundations of Data Science Conference organized by ACM and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an interdisciplinary event bringing together researchers and practitioners to address foundational data science challenges in prediction, inference, fairness, ethics and the future of data science. Keynote speakers are Mihaela van der Schaar (Alan Turing Institute) and Oren Etzioni (Allen Institute for AI). Tutorials include “Causal Reasoning Tutorial” by David Blei, Columbia University and “Fairness, Privacy, and Ethics in Data Science Tutorial” by Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania.
