ACM has named Shyamnath Gollakota of the University of Washington the recipient of the 2020 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for contributions to the use of wireless signals in creating novel applications, including battery-free communications, health monitoring, gesture recognition, and bio-based wireless sensing. His work has revolutionized and reimagined what can be done using wireless systems.

ACM named Margo Seltzer, Michael Olson and Keith Bostic recipients of the 2020 ACM Software System Award for Berkeley DB, which was an early exemplar of the NoSQL movement and pioneered the “dual-license” approach to software licensing. Seltzer and Bostic founded Sleepycat Software to continue development of Berkeley DB and provide commercial support. Olson joined in 1997, and for 10 years, Berkeley DB was the de facto data store for major web infrastructure.

Yossi Azar, Andrei Broder, Anna Karlin, Michael Mitzenmacher, and Eli Upfal have been named 2020 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award recipients for the discovery and analysis of balanced allocations, known as the power of two choices, and their extensive applications to practice. The Balanced Allocations paper and the follow-up work on the power of two choices are elegant theoretical results, and their content will continue to have a demonstrable effect on the practice of computing.

The 2020 ACM – AAAI Allen Newell Award honors Hector Levesque and Moshe Vardi. Levesque is recognized for fundamental contributions to knowledge representation and reasoning, and their broader influence within theoretical computer science, databases, robotics, and the study of Boolean satisfiability. Vardi is cited for contributions to the development of logic as a unifying foundational framework and a tool for modeling computational systems.

ACM has named Ayanna Howard of The Ohio State University as the 2021-2022 Athena Lecturer. Howard is recognized for fundamental contributions to the development of accessible human-robotic systems and artificial intelligence, along with forging new paths to broaden participation in computing through entrepreneurial and mentoring efforts. Her contributions span theoretical foundations, experimental evaluation, and practical applications.

ACM has named Michael Franz of the University of California, Irvine the recipient of the ACM Charles P. "Chuck" Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award. Franz is recognized for the development of just-in-time compilation techniques that enable fast and feature-rich web services on the internet. Every day, millions of people around the world use online applications such as Gmail and Facebook. These web applications would not have been possible without the groundbreaking compilation technique Franz developed in the mid 1990s.

Kui Ren is a Professor and Associate Dean at Zhejiang University’s College of Computer Science and Technology, where he also directs the Institute of Cyber Science and Technology. An ACM Fellow, Ren has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and conferences and received many Best Paper Awards from IEEE and ACM conferences. He also serves as Chair of the security special interest group of ACM’s China Council, as a member of the ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS) steering committee, and as a member of the Science and Technology Committee of the Chinese Ministry of Education.

Alison Clear is an Associate Professor at Eastern Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand. She was recently recognized with the ACM SIGCSE Lifetime Service to the Computer Science Education Community Award. Clear is Co-chair (along with Allen Parrish of the University of Alabama) of the CC2020 Task Force, which recently published the ACM/IEEE-CS report Computing Curricula 2020: Paradigms for Future Computing Curricula (CC2020). The report is the first comprehensive update of the ACM/IEEE-CS curricula guidelines for baccalaureate degrees in 15 years.

ACM's US Technology Policy Committee is joining with the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and the Online News Association to bring together key stakeholders, experts, and thought leaders to discuss the future of deepfakes, disinformation, and democracy in a half-day virtual policy conference. Joining the international roster of speakers will be ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate and Google VP and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf. Register to watch on Wednesday, June 2 from 1 to 4 PM EDT.

A May 6 panel convened by ACM and IEEE discussed the computing profession's state in the world today and its future outlook. The panel focused on the many challenges of computational science, computer science education, and how information technology affects society, industry, and academia. Panelists included ACM President Gabriele Kotsis; IEEE-CS President Forrest Shull; ACM Turing Award Laureate Barbara Liskov; ACM Fellows Nuria Oliver and Ricardo Baeza-Yates; and Communications of the ACM Senior Editor Moshe Y. Vardi. Watch a recording of the panel.

The National Science Board is seeking nominations for eight board member positions, for a six-year term beginning May 10, 2022. The NSB provides oversight for, and establishes the policies of, the US National Science Foundation and is responsible for assembling and transmitting recommendations to the White House for appointments from various scientific, engineering, and educational organizations and societies. Applications are due May 31. For more information visit the nominations portal.

Michelle Zhou is Co-founder and CEO of Juji, Inc., which develops cognitive artificial intelligence assistants in the form of chatbots. She has authored more than 100 scientific publications on subjects including conversational AI, personality analytics, and interactive visual analytics of big data. An ACM Distinguished Member, Zhou serves as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems.

ACM presented Special Awards to finalists in the 2021 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world's largest high school science research competition, held virtually May 16-21, 2021. Nearly 2,000 high school students competed to reach the finals. Each year, organizations representing government, industry and education serve as Special Award Sponsors, providing awards, scholarships, internships and other prizes to student finalists. In addition to monetary prizes, ACM also provides complimentary ACM Student Lite Memberships for the duration of the award recipients' undergraduate education.

ACM has named Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas at Austin the recipient of the 2020 ACM Prize in Computing for groundbreaking contributions to quantum computing. Aaronson showed how results from computational complexity theory can provide new insights into the laws of quantum physics, and brought clarity to what quantum computers will, and will not, be able to do. His quantum supremacy experiments allow scientists to give convincing evidence that quantum computers provide exponential speedups without having to first build a full fault-tolerant quantum computer.

ACM has named Alfred Aho, Lawrence Gussman Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, and Jeffrey Ullman, Stanford W. Ascherman Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and CEO of Gradiance Corporation, recipients of the 2020 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation, and for synthesizing these results and those of others in their highly influential books, which educated generations of computer scientists.

ACM Selects are themed shortlists curated by subject matter experts for both serious and emerging computing professionals, with the goal of providing new ways to discover relevant resources, either through ACM or authenticated by ACM-affiliated specialists. The latest Selects cover Getting Started with HPC, Getting Started with Networks, Getting Started with Data Science #2, and People in Computing #7: Women in Hardware and Programming Languages.

By highlighting successful technical women who are leading diverse careers in the technology industry, ACM-W’s webinar series, “Celebrating Technology Leaders,” aims to inform students and early-career professionals about the multitude of career options open to them. The latest episode features Women in Cybersecurity on June 9; register here. Previous webinars featured tech entrepreneurship; UI/UX; data; and robotics. Visit the YouTube playlist to watch the webinars.

ACM Focus is a new way to explore the breadth and variety of ACM content, and to stay current with the latest trends in your technical community. ACM Focus consists of a set of AI-curated custom feeds by subject, each serving up a focused set of the latest relevant ACM content that provides overall awareness of relevant ACM activities, people, talks and a variety of published works. Examples of topic categories include AI, Web, Applied Computing, Society, Graphics, and more. The feeds are built in an automated fashion and are refined as you interact with them. Explore ACM Focus today!

The ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering will feature the latest in research, education, open source projects, testing, analysis, and more. Keynoters include Dario Gil (IBM Research), Prem Devanbu (University of California, Davis), Michael Lyu (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Elaine Weyuker (Mälardalen University), and ACM Fellow Jeannette Wing (Columbia University).

The International Symposium on Computer Architecture is the premier forum for new ideas and research results in computer architecture. Workshops will cover such topics as DRAM security, environmental responsibility, and real-world applications. Hillery Hunter (IBM), Monica Lam (Stanford University) and Pradeep Dubey (State University of New York, Stony Brook) will keynote.

The International Conference on Management of Data is a leading international forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences. Workshops will cover Big Data in Emergent Distributed Environments; Exploiting AI for Data Management; Data Management for End-to-End Machine Learning; Data Management on New Hardware; and Graph Data Management and Systems and Network Data Analytics.

Encourage your colleagues to join ACM, share the benefits of ACM and receive free gifts for participating. Your support of ACM is critical to our continuing efforts to advance computing as a science and a profession. 

The most comprehensive collection of full-text articles and bibliographic records covering computing and information technology includes the complete collection of ACM's publications. 

ACM offers lifelong learning resources including online books from O'Reilly, online courses from Skillsoft, TechTalks on the hottest topics in computing and IT, and more.