What's Up Lately at ACM India - Fall 2022 Edition

October 4 , 2022

Hello all India members of ACM:

Greetings of the festive season on the occasion of Dussehra, with Navaratri and Durga Puja coming to a conclusion, and Eid and Diwali around the corner. Also, enjoy the "World Smile Day" on Friday, 7 October, as we celebrate the smiley 😄.

New Council as of July 2022
After the ACM India council elections, the new council has taken over since 1 July, 2022. Take a look at the home page of ACM India (https://india.acm.org/) to get to know the team. As the council continues the ACM mission in India, this time we have specifically added new committees to ensure: (I) our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); (II) responsibility to the society; and (III) enhancement to our bylaws and policies now that we are into our 13th year.

Membership Keeps Gaining Strength
As I mentioned last time, we exceeded 13,000 in membership for the first time at the end of March 2022. The number has grown even further in the subsequent quarter, to the extent that it shows almost 27% increase over one year, with professional membership growth by over 37%! It is very gratifying to see the ACM member base in India strengthen like this. There are thousands more who participate and benefit from our activities without becoming members. Although membership is not necessary for most of our initiatives, let's encourage them to go for membership (https://india.acm.org/membership) too and formally become part of this computing community in India.

Award Nominations Are In
The prestigious ACM India Awards for professionals is now into its third year, while the Doctoral Dissertation Award continues going strong after 10 years (https://india.acm.org/awards). The deadline for nominations was 31 August. Look forward to the winner announcements in the coming months and meeting them in person at the ACM India Annual Event in February 2023.

Webinars in Many Forms
For the last few months, we have been running single-speaker webinars and multi-speaker discussions in forums such as ACM India Industry Webinars ( https://india.acm.org/education/learning/industry-webinars), the Education Webinar Series with iSIGCSE (https://india.acm.org/education/learning/education-webinars), and the Panel Discussion Series with TCS Research (https://india.acm.org/education/learning/acm-tcs-webinar-series ). After a period of what we suspect to be online webinar fatigue, the recent sessions have seen audiences joining in good numbers.

In-Person Events Are Back
Our regular feature "ACM India Summer Schools" (https://india.acm.org/education/acm-india-summer-schools-2022) concluded in July, this time in physical mode. As usual, we focused on educating self-motivated students on research and innovations in technology topics such as Data Science and AI/ML and Shape Modelling, with one school specifically reserved for women students.

Like summer schools, most of the events are happening in physical/hybrid mode, now that the pandemic has abated (touch wood).

The 4th edition of Computational Thinking in Schools (CTiS 2022) conference (https://event.india.acm.org/CTiS/) by CSpathshala took place on 7-8 July. We had a tremendous response with more than 500 attendees for this in-person / online conference for school teachers.

In addition to one-on-one mentoring, PhD Clinic is now organizing meetups and workshops to provide guidance to research students on conducting and publishing research. There have already been five such events from July until now. You can find out more about the past and upcoming events from the PhD Clinic page (https://india.acm.org/research/phd-clinic).

More to Look Forward To
It's going to be a busy quarter, so keep an eye on the News/Updates page (https://india.acm.org/news-and-updates) for announcements. Here are some upcoming events where we look forward to your participation:

To wrap up, please continue to participate (and contribute if possible) to ACM India initiatives. Visit the News/Updates page (https://india.acm.org/news-and-updates) and ACM India social media handles frequently. The mails from "ACM India" will keep getting delivered to your registered mailbox too. And to continue receiving them, login to your ACM account (https://myacm.acm.org), go to "Electronic Mailing Lists" in the left column, and ensure that you remain subscribed to MEMBERNET-INDIA mailing list.

Bye for now. Please feel free to write to me with suggestions and feedback.

Regards,
Hemant
[email protected]
Hemant Pande, PhD
Executive Director, ACM India