During the next several months, ACM will celebrate 50 years of the Turing Award and the visionaries who have received it. Our aim is to highlight the significant impact of the contributions of the Turing Laureates on computing and society, to look ahead to the future of technology and innovation, and to help inspire the next generation of computer scientists to invent and dream. Our celebration will culminate with a conference June 23 - 24, 2017 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco.

The ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences has been renamed the ACM Prize in Computing. The award recognizes computing professionals in the early to middle stages of their careers. Infosys will continue to fund the award, whose cash prize has been increased to $250,000. In addition, recipients will now be invited to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, an annual networking event for mathematicians and computing scientists.

University of Washington's Kate Starbird and Emma Spiro explore different approaches to detecting online misinformation in the often-confusing social media space, including machine learning and explicit recommendation systems. Some of the most promising approaches recruit online "crowdworkers" as detectives. But detecting misinformation is only a small part of the “fake news” problem. A more complex, socio-technical question is what to do next.

Manuela Veloso is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and is the Head of their Machine Learning Department. She is also an ACM Fellow. With her students she developed autonomous robots for soccer and mobile service. “As our society increasingly relies on digital data, machine learning is crucial for most of our current and future applications.“

The 2016-17 ACM NDC Study of non-Ph.D. granting departments in computing at 4-year institutions is now open. NDC is the only survey producing timely data on enrollment, degree production, student body composition, and faculty salaries/demographics that can help benchmark your institution/program(s). See 2015-16 results here. If your unit has a program in CS, CE, IS, IT, and/or SE but you haven't received an invitation to participate, email timanovsky@hq.acm.org.

George Roussos is a Professor of Pervasive Computing at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a member of USACM’s Working Group on the Internet of Things, and co-authored a book on Smart Cities. “Technology offers the potential for creating new city infrastructure, but a much stronger force for shaping infrastructures is dialogue between the different social groups occupying the city.”

In celebration of Computer Science Education Week, a group of 17 women Microsoft researchers gave their predictions for developments in various areas of computer science on one-year and 10-year time scales. Among them are ACM luminaries Susan Dumais, Kathryn McKinley, Jennifer Chayes, and Karin Strauss sharing their insights and inspiration for the next generation of women computer scientists. 

Read About Microsoft's 2016 ACM Fellows & Distinguished Members

ACM has named 53 of its members as ACM Fellows for major contributions in areas including artificial intelligence, cryptography, computer architecture, human-computer interaction, high performance computing and programming languages. The achievements of the 2016 ACM Fellows are accelerating the digital revolution, and affect almost every aspect of how we live and work today. “As nearly 100,000 computing professionals are members of our association, to be selected to join the top one percent is truly an honor,” says ACM President Vicki L. Hanson.

(Image: 2015 ACM Fellows)

Young researchers at all phases of their careers (undergrad, PhD or postdoc) are encouraged to apply for the next Heidelberg Laureate Forum, for a chance to personally interact with laureates of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics and computer science, including the ACM A.M. Turing Award. HLF, which includes scientific, social and outreach activities in an informal atmosphere, takes place September 24 to 29, 2017. Applications are due February 14, 2017.

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