Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Thomas Zimmermann is a Senior Principal Researcher in the Productivity and Intelligence and Software Analysis and Intelligence groups at Microsoft Research. His research interests include software engineering, data science, and recommender systems. Zimmermann is the Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT). He has received numerous awards, including seven Ten Year Most Influential Paper awards at various conferences as well as five SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards. He was recently named an ACM Fellow for contributions to mining software repositories and defect prediction.

Éva Tardos is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University and is one of the most influential leaders in the field of theoretical computer science. Her honors include receiving the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the Fulkerson Prize, the George B. Dantzig Prize, the Van Wijngaarden Award, and the Gödel Prize. From 2015 until 2021, she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the ACM (JACM). Tardos was recently named the 2022–2023 ACM Athena Lecturer for fundamental research contributions and for her dedicated mentoring and service.

Yiran Chen is a Professor at Duke University and Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging the Next-Generation Networks (Athena). His research interests include new memory and storage systems, machine learning, neuromorphic computing, and mobile computing systems. His honors include the IEEE Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, the ACM SIGDA Service Award, and being named an ACM Fellow for his contributions to nonvolatile memory technologies. Chen is the Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA).

ACM-W is the ACM Community of Support for Women in Computing. ACM-W supports, celebrates, and advocates internationally for the full engagement of women in all aspects of the computing field, providing a wide range of programs and services to ACM members and working in the larger community to advance the contributions of technical women.

Ruth Lennon, current chair of ACM-W Europe, has been appointed the next Global Chair of ACM-W. Ruth is the director of Craobh Technology Consulting, an organization that provides personalized solutions to industry problems. She is also a lecturer with 20 years of experience in the Department of Computing at Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Ireland, and has been a member of ACM for over 20 years.

Read more about Ruth Lennon's selection as Global Chair on the ACM-W website.

The open exchange of ideas is central to ACM’s mission. This requires an environment that embraces diversity and provides a safe, welcoming environment for all. ACM's Policy Against Harassment applies to all ACM activities, defines expected behavior and explains how to report unacceptable behavior.

ACM's Technology Policy Council and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council sponsored a free screening and public discussion of the film "Coded Bias" and how those in computer science fields can address issues of algorithmic fairness. The discussion, held on March 29, 2021, has been archived, and "Coded Bias" is now viewable on both PBS and Netflix.

ACM SIGACCESS has developed a new free guide to help committees organizing and executing accessible virtual conferences inclusive for people with disabilities. The guidance is based on accessibility standards such as the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and user experiences with virtual meetings, and provides a central resource for both best practices and links to other resources. Check out the guide at https://www.sigaccess.org/accessible-virtual-conferences/.

ACM Fellow Timothy Pinkston organized and moderated a panel on "Valuing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Our Computing Community" held as a joint session of several co-located virtual conferences in March 2021. The panel included John Hennessey, David Patterson, Natalie Enright Jerger, Margaret Martonosi, Bill Dally and Kim Hazelwood. Watch a recording of the session and read a recap in CACM.