Chapter Member Newsletter

ACM Chapter Member News | September 2019

Welcome to the September 2019 edition of the ACM Chapter Member News.

Chapters are the "local neighborhoods" of ACM. Our professional and student chapters worldwide serve as nodes of activity for ACM members and the computing community at large, offering seminars, lectures, and the opportunity to meet peers and experts in many fields of interest. With over 1000 active chapters worldwide, we would like to take the time now to connect with all of you, and bring you a few ACM Highlights. 

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

• ACM Chapter News

• Chapter Spotlight

• Welcome to Our Newest Chapters

• Why join ACM?

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ACM Chapter News

ACM Chapter Annual Reports

Chapters were required to submit their 2019 Annual Reports by August 31st. Thank you to all those Chapters who have done so. Any active Chapter who has neglected to file this report is scheduled to be put on probation, while Chapters on probation are scheduled to be de-chartered on November 1, 2019. If you would like to keep your Chapter active, be sure to complete this Annual Report before November.

To complete the report online, you must log in with your unique Chapter web account at https://services.acm.org/chapter_admin. Please note, your Chapter web account is entirely separate from your personal web account.

If you are unsure of your Chapter web account or need to reset the password, please visit: https://www.acm.org/chapters/web-account-links.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact [email protected].

UPE ACM Scholarship Award Winners

In the search for excellence and professional commitment to the computing and information technology fields, The Executive Council of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) are proud to announce the UPE ACM Student Chapter Scholarship Award Winners. Four students were chosen and each will receive $1,000.

The winners are:
Hannah Bollar, University of Pennsylvania
Olivia Figueira, Santa Clara University
Tushar Sadana, Manipal University Jaipur
Kevin Tan, University of California Los Angeles

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to all of you who participated.

ACM XRDS Essay Contest 2019

For the first time XRDS is hosting a writing competition. ACM XRDS Essay Contest 2019 is on THE FUTURE OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Given three choices to focus your story “Masters or Slaves of Technology?”, “On the Brink of Orwell's '1984' Vision?” and “Digital Society - Including or Excluding?”, we invite you to submit your 1000-word essay talking about your thoughts on the topic. Win a video chat with a leading researcher in the field of your chosen topic for your essay. Please send your submission to [email protected] by October 20, 2019 11:59pm ET.

Format and Eligibility

The ACM XRDS Essay Contest is open to all students of higher education. Essays should be submitted as pdf documents of any style with 900 to 1100 words via email to [email protected].

The deadline for submissions is October 20, 2019 11:59pm ET.

The authors certify with their submissions that they have followed the ACM publication policies on “Author Representations,” “Plagiarism” and “Criteria for Authorship” (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/). Authors also certify with their submissions that they will transfer the copyright of winning essays to ACM.

Further the following rules apply:

1. The topic of your submission should be “THE FUTURE OF EVERYDAY LIFE” with focus on a selected subtopic: “Masters or Slaves of Technology?”, “On the Brink of Orwell's '1984' Vision?” or “Digital Society - Including or Excluding?”.
2. Submissions should reflect the author's unaided work. Inspiration from other sources should be clearly marked, and proper attribution to the rightful author should be given - failure to do so will result in disqualification!
3. Essays should be between 900 and 1100 words long. This includes the section titles, but not the references.
4. Articles should be written in good quality English, and checked for grammar or spelling mistakes.
5. The competition is open to anyone currently enrolled in higher education. This includes Bachelor, Master, and PhD level students.
6. Your submission will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Topic Relevance
• Accuracy
• Creativity / Originality
• Structure
• Depth of Insight

7. Your submission document has to include your full name, email address, affiliation and education level

Judges and Assessment Process

Entries will be judged by selected members of the XDRS editorial staff. All decisions by the judges are final. Judges are:
Johanna Schacht, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Diane Golay, Uppsala University, Sweden
Darshit Patel, Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, India
Judeth Choi, Carnegie Mellon University

Prizes

All winning essays will be published on the ACM XRDS blog. A summary article about the competition and the winning articles will be published in the XRDS spring 2020 issue.

ACM XRDS grants each of the four winners with a 45-minute video chat session with a leading researcher in the field of their essay. The winners will be sent an email with information about the chat session some weeks after the end of the contest. Fewer than four winners may be selected if the quality of the submitted essays is not up to XRDS standards.

Questions?

In case of questions, please first check the ACM XRDS blog for announcements and clarifications: https://blog.xrds.acm.org/. You can also contact the ACM XRDS Essay Contest Organizers at [email protected].

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ACM Chapter Spotlight

The Nazarbayev University ACM Student Chapter in Astana, Kazakhstan hosted the Dean of Engineering from Stanford University, Professor Jennifer Widom, on September 4-8. Professor Widom provided a Big Data short-course, a Design Thinking workshop, as well as a women’s roundtable as part of her Instructional Odyssey” program. The chapter had 230 registered participants in this academic event. In the Big Data course, Professor Widom lectured on basic data manipulation and analysis, basic concepts of Machine learning, network analysis and unstructured data, and other topics. The Nazarbayev University ACM Student Chapter is confident that the knowledge and experience participants received had an immense impact on the development of the Nazarbayev University Community and rose awareness about major topics of today’s world including gender equality. You can find prof. Jennifer Widom's article on her visit to Kazakhstan here.

The NMAMIT ACM Student Chapter from Udupi, India conducted 2 Cloud Study Jam sessions on August 17 & 18. Topics like cloud architecture, virtualization, virtual machines and Google Cloud Platform essentials on 'Qwiklabs' were all covered. Students were given hands-on sessions on 'Qwiklabs' through which they practiced with Google Cloud Platform services at no cost for 30 days (Google Sponsored). All the students were then given simple tasks to complete under GCP Essential Quest, followed by online Coursera courses for free. Upon completion of the tasks, the students received digital badges, which can be shared on LinkedIn profiles and Google ships.

Congratulations to both chapters and keep up the great work.

If your chapter would like to be featured in the chapter spotlight please email [email protected] with a description of your recent event.

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Welcome to Our Newest Chapters

• AISSMS IOIT ACM Student Chapter - Pune, India (Student)
• Ankara ACM-W Chapter - Ankara, Turkey (Professional)
• BVRIT HYDERABAD, College of Engineering for Women ACM-W Student Chapter - Hyderabad, India (Student)
• California Baptist University ACM Student Chapter - Riverside, CA (Student)
• Delhi ACM-W Chapter - Noida, India (Professional)
• FAMT ACM Student Chapter - Ratnagiri, India (Student)
• Gazi University ACM Student Chapter - Ankara, Turkey (Student)
• Guatemala City ACM Chapter - Guatemala City, Guatemala (Professional)
• IIT Mandi ACM-W Student Chapter - Mandi, India (Student)
• Ireland ACM SIGCSE Chapter - Belfield, Ireland (Professional)
• Jaipur ACM Chapter - Jaipur, India (Professional)
• Jamshoro ACM-W Chapter - Hyderabad, Pakistan (Professional)
• Kent State ACM-W Student Chapter - Kent, OH (Student)
• LBSCEK ACM Student Chapter - Kasaragod, India (Student)
• Mody University of Science and Technology ACM-W Student Chapter - Lakshmangarh, India (Student)
• MVSR ACM Student Chapter - HYDERABAD, India (Student)
• MWSU ACM Student Chapter - Saint Joseph, MO (Student)
• Nirma University ACM Student Chapter - Ahmedabad, India (Student)
• NITK ACM-W Student Chapter - Mangaluru, India (Student)
• PES University EC Campus ACM Student Chapter - Bangalore, India (Student)
• Portland ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter - Portland, OR (Professional)
• RAIT ACM Student Chapter - Navi Mumbai, India (Student)
• Sahyadri ACM Student Chapter - Adyar, India (Student)
• SIGHPC China ACM Chapter - Beijing, China (Professional)
• SVCE ACM-W Student Chapter - SRIPERUMBUDUR, India (Student)
• UAH ACM-W Student Chapter - Huntsville, AL (Student)
• University of Athens ACM Student Chapter - Athens, Greece (Student)
• University of Belize ACM Student Chapter - Belmopan, Belize (Student)
• University of Pittsburgh ACM Student Chapter - Pittsburgh, PA (Student)
• Viborg ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter - Viborg, Denmark (Professional)
• Wayne State College ACM Student Chapter - Wayne, NE (Student)

Why join ACM?

Not an ACM Member yet? Whether you are a student or a professional, ACM has great benefits to offer you. Read all about ACM's many benefits and membership options.

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Chapter and Chapter Member Benefits

Be sure to take advantage of the benefits ACM Chapters and ACM Chapter Members receive.

Read up on Professional Chapter Benefits and Resources, Professional Chapter Member Benefits,  Student Chapter Benefits and Resources, and Student Chapter Member Benefits.