• Letter from ACM-W Chair
• News from ACM-W Celebrations
• News from ACM-W Student Chapters
• News from ACM-W Professional Chapters
• News from ACM-W Scholarships
• News from ACM-W Europe

A big “Thank You!” to those who participated in the Global Survey of Mathematical, Natural and Computing Sciences, part of the Gender Gap in Science Project (https://gender-gap-in-science.org/).  The computing community contributed 3335 of the 32,406 total responses and had participants from every global region.  Reyyan Ayfer (ACM-W Vice Chair) and I will be attending the annual meeting of project partners this week in Berlin, Germany.  During this meeting, activity for this third and final year of the project will be finalized. Once completed the project will have generated three work packages – the global survey, a data-backed study on scientific publications, and a database of good practices for attracting and retaining women in our disciplines.  ACM-W will publish web addresses for these resources as they become available.

International Grad Cohort Project

ACM-W congratulates the recipients of this year’s funding to participate in the 2019 CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop that will be held in Chicago, IL, this coming April.

• Sadia Saeed, Aneela Sultana, and Ifrah Farruakh Khan, Pakistan
• Christina Aragon and Ruji P. Medina, Philippines
• Öznur Özkasap and Pelin Angin, Turkey
• Zainab AlMeraj and Reem Ali AlBaghli, Kuwait
• Shaimaa Mohammed Aljuhani, Saudi Arabia

I look forward to seeing this valuable program established in these countries in the coming year!

ACM Ubiquity Explores the Future of Computing and Seeks to Recognize Young Professionals

Congratulations to ACM-W member Dr. Bushra Anjum, who has recently been selected as a senior editor for ACM Ubiquity, ACM’s peer-reviewed web-based magazine devoted to the future of computing and the people who are creating it. She has started a new initiative Innovation Leaders for Ubiquity which consists of interviews of young professionals, who comment on their concerns about the future of computing and their ambitions to shape the future through their leadership. Through this section, Dr. Anjum aims to highlight the efforts of the young professionals in terms of ground-breaking technical ideas, evolving the ethics and behaviors associated with the computing industry and academia, and minimizing the negative social implications of technology.

In the launch interview of Innovation Leaders, Dr. Anjum shared her vision of the future of computing workforce and emphasized that a successful engineer of the future is a generalist with a trained interdisciplinary and cross-functional mindset and whose training is augmented by the key human values of creativity, empathy, and flexibility. You can read, or audio stream, the full conversation here: https://buff.ly/2Q0Z1CB

Ubiquity ‘Innovation Leaders’is eager to promote success stories featuring the dynamic ACM-W community. If you are interested in being interviewed as an innovation leader or know of someone who should be feature d, contact her via Twitter @DrBushraAnjum.

Other ACM-W News

Also appearing in this month’s newsletter:

• The Scholarships Committee report features recent awardees Shaan Chopra, Margarita Marinka, and Ditty Matthew.
• The 5^th Annual Women in Computing – Philippines Celebration is hightlighted.
• A report from The Northwest Ohio ACM-W Professional Chapter is included.
• An invitation to join the ACM-W Slack Channel appears in the Student Chapters report.
• The ACM-W Europe contribution has updates on womENcourage 2019 and a call for volunteers.

Thanks for standing with us as we work to fulfill our mission.

Jodi Tims
ACM-W Chair

News from ACM-W Celebrations

Bicol University and National University Lead the 5^th ACM-WIC Philipines 2018 Celebration

Women researchers were brought together from academia and industry during the 5th ACM Women in Computing-Philippines Celebration 2018 held November 24, 2018 at AVP Grand Cystall Hall, Legazpi City, to freely share their ideas and opinions on the emerging technologies and issues in Computer Science (CS), Information Technology (IT), and Information Systems (IS).

The theme for this year’s celebration was “Technology Innovation for Disaster.”  The conference was attended by more than three hundred participants from twenty-two (22) schools across the Philippines.  Bicol University President Dr. Arnulfo M. Mascariñas addressed the participants in his welcome remarks and this was followed by the opening remarks of Dr. Roxas, chair of the 5^th ACM WIC and NU’s Vice President for Academic Affairs.  

The first keynote speaker was Ms. Frei Sangil, the young Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Layer Tech Software Labs Inc. She discussed the “Power of Data in the Dynamics of the Computing Age” by explaining the value of data, how it can be used against a person, and how it can be used for social good. The second plenary discussion was the video lecture of Ms. Dianne Gonzales entitled “Future of Work in the Age of AI (Artificial Intelligence).” She is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Augmented Intelligence Pros. The last keynote speaker was Ms. Julie Ann Salido of Aklan State University, who discussed her research on “Melanoma Detection of Dermoscopic Images Using Deep Learning”.

There were also four poster presentations and the entries are: “Scheduling Management with Microservice-based Architecture” by Janette Tanquis, “PLANTASTIC: A Web-based E-Commerce System for Medicinal Seedlings Available in the Philippines” by Pamela Combis, Batman Odulio, Kiel Jeremy Nocito, Mark Darrell Signo, and Ramon Rodriguez; ”PapMApp: Paperless Meeting Application for Bicol University Board of Regents” authored by Zenica Torre, Kianne Paguntalan, Jhona Jane Francisco, Benedicto Balilo, and Davie Balmadrid; “Portable Application of PSU Grade Transmutation System” by Janeth Cladera and Arjay Abio; and “Exploring Mathematical Modelling Towards Agent-based Model for Leaf Vain Development” by Maria Art Clarino and Eliezer Albacea.

Each presenter was given the chance to answer the questions asked by the participants.  Later that afternoon, the following three researches were announced as winners for the Computing Society of the Philippines’ (CSP) Special Research Award and a cash prize to further assist them in funding their research:  “Gender-Based Comparative Analysis of Disaster Related Responses Through Topic Discovery”, “Faculty Performance Evaluation System (FPES): A Cloud-based Application”, and  “Enhanced Initial Parameter Selection for Expectation Maximization (EM) Algorithm.” The award was given by the program committee chair Mr. Nathaniel Oco of NU.

Further, Dr. Roxas gave an orientation talk on Philippine Information and Computing Accreditation Board (PICAB) and the program finished with a message of heart-felt gratitude from BUCS Dean Prof. Jocelyn Serrano.

News from ACM-W Student Chapters

We invite you and your fellow chapter members, both past and present, to join the ACM-W Slack Channel! If you haven’t heard, slack is a mobile and web app that is a collaboration hub where you can chat, connect, collaborate, and so much more.

Our channel is brand new and we need your help to make it all it can be! Share stories about your chapter’s activities and events. Share advice on how to engage chapter members and their communities. Share your knowledge about how to create a successful ACM-W chapter. Reach out, connect, support, and advance ACM-W chapter members from around the globe. Join us on slack.

Join the conversation: tinyurl.com/acmwslack

If you have never used slack before, you can learn more about it here and how to use it here. 

News from ACM-W Professional Chapters

The Northwest Ohio ACM-W Professional chapter has been quite busy since they were chartered last year.  Besides holding elections, they worked with students from the BGSU Graphic Design Department to create branding for their new chapter including a logo, website design, promotion materials and business card design. A chapter Facebook page now keeps everyone informed and a Winter Newsletter outlines the remaining events for the year.  Janell Vickers, the chapter’s chairperson had this to say about their progress, “We continue to partner with the local university student ACM-W Chapters (University of Toledo, Bowling Green State University, University of Findley and a new ACM Chapter starting at Tiffin University) and are looking forward to the many events still planned”.  Last year they held a chapter kick-off event for students with a panel of six professional women who shared their successful IT careers and participated in the TechToledo Mixer for IT professionals gaining interest from several potential members.  Coming up this year, they plan to:

• Lead a session during the “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” for 6-8^th grade girls – UT
• Help facilitate the 24 Hr. Toledo Smart Cities HACKATHON – UT JumpStart     
• Host a Networking Dinner for professionals in IT – Mercy Health
• Attend speaker event, Dr. Helen Sun, Chief Technology Officer of STATS (sports data and intelligence) – BGSU
• Host the spring chapter meeting, dinner and election of 2019-2020 officers 

For more information: https://www.facebook.com/NorthwestOhioACMW/

News from ACM-W Scholarships

The ACM Scholarship for Attendance of Research Conferences program provides support for women students in Computer Science and related programs who wish to attend research conferences. The student does not have to present a paper at the conference to be eligible for a scholarship. Applications are evaluated  6 times each year, to distribute awards across a range of conferences. There are usually 3-6 awards given for each group of applications. The ACM Scholarships are made possible by the generous support of Microsoft, Google and Oracle.

If the award is for attendance at one of the ACM Special Interest Group conferences (SIG conferences), the SIG will most likely provide complementary conference registration and a mentor during the conference. The number of free registrations available varies from SIG to SIG. ACM-W has helped students attend a wide range of meetings including SIGGRAPH, SIGCHI, Women in Cyber Security, ACM EC, SIGCSE, IEEE Conferences, DIS, IPDPS, ICCC, AAMAS, FLAIRS, WIMS, CSCW, GECCO, ICAPS, and ICSE, amongst others.

The scholarship exposes students to prominent researchers in their field, introduces students to new research, and excites them about doing research by themselves. We ask students to share with us some of their thoughts on the conference they attend, preferably with a picture, so that we can show our readers and funders the diversity of our winners. We never cease to find truly inspiring stories!

This month we report  impressions from the winners from the  round of the scholarship award that went to conferences in December 2018. As usual, it is difficult to choose between the histories, as they are mostly very motivating and some very moving too.

For an undergraduate perspective we picked Shaan Chopra, from IIIT Delhi, who went to Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) in New York City’s Hudson River, in Jersey City, US. Shaan was bowled over by her experience. As she writes “The conference was far more than a learning experience for me. Not only did I get to attend the presentation of the full paper co-authored by me and 2 workshops (I had one position paper in each), but I also got an opportunity to network with people in the field. I was completely mesmerised by the community and the welcoming nature of its members for a beginner researcher like me.[…] CSCW was an absolutely amazing experience for me as I got to experience a community that I wish to become an integral part of, some day. Though initially a little overwhelming, the numerous formal and informal sessions (including the conference banquet) provided a platform for insightful, comfortable, and fun interactions. For my first conference, I could not have asked for a better experience!” Way to go Shaan!

Then for a Masters’ student perspective we picked Margarita Markina, from ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia, who went to the GECCO 2018 Conference in Kyoto, Japan. Margarita says “It was a great experience. I could completely immerse myself in the research community and saw everything with my own eyes how exactly everything happens. I saw that the research community is a large group of people with deep knowledge who solves important problems. It was interesting to listen to tutorials, workshops and meet people who are working on the similar topics as me.”  We are glad you had such a positive experience, Margarita!

We also discuss the PHD student perspective, in this case Ditty Matthew, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, who went to the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Wellington, New Zealand. Ditty writes about her experience “[the] ACM-W travel grant is a great support for women researchers to attend international conferences. This Travel Grant program has helped me in getting a much-needed exposure to foster my knowledge and research experience during AI 2018. […] . I am very excited that my paper was well received by the elite audience at AI 2018. As a PhD student, this conference helped me to get the much needed experience of  how researchers, experiment, sometimes fail and then succeed, and finally celebrate their work impacting the society at conferences. My travel and stay in Wellington also gave me an opportunity to mingle with a diverse collection of people of varied ethnicity, culture and conduct. Thanks to ACM for being a firm supporter and allowing me to be a part of the legacy of being the recipient of ACM-W Travel Grant.”  We’re happy you got to experience such a great meeting, Ditty!

Congratulations to these and to our other winners! We hope you do  get to be part of your chosen research community.

The next application deadline is February 15 for conferences taking place in April—May, 2019.   For more information and to apply visit: https://women.acm.org/scholarships/. 

If you have any questions, please contact the scholarship committee chair Prof. Viviana Bono, bono@di.unito.it

News from ACM-W Europe

Rome, Italy  September 16-18, 2019
https://womencourage.acm.org

womENcourage 2019 – “Diversity Drives Societal Change”

The Sixth ACM Celebration of Women in Computing will be held in the beautiful city of Rome,  Italy on September 16-18, 2019. The three-day event includes a Hackathon, Workshops, Posters, Technical Talks, Career Fair, and Panel Discussions. Join us to socialize, share knowledge and experiences, learn about exciting opportunities in research and professional career, and celebrate the achievements in the Women in Computing.