The

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

's Council on 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. ACM-W is an active organization with over 36,000 members.

Celebrations of Women in Computing

ACM-W sponsors annual celebrations focused on women in computing. ACM-W provides up to $3,000 seed funding for each celebration, and also raises and disburses corporate sponsorship. Each celebration organizing committee is responsible for additional fundraising within their conference area. 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

members and working in the larger community to advance the contributions of technical women. ACM-W Celebrations are regional conferences with global participants from industry, academia, and government. Celebration participation is growing and these events represent some of the largest gatherings of women in technology. The original Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing was recognized by the US

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

on their page "The Untold History of Women in Science and Technology" in the entry for

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

Rear Admiral Rear admiral is a flag officer rank used by English-speaking navies. In most European navies, the equivalent rank is called counter admiral. Rear admiral is usually immediately senior to commodore and immediately below vice admiral. It is ...

Grace Hopper Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of mach ...

. In addition to this noteworthy beginning, the conferences have attracted the participation of technology notables including Anita Hill,

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifetim ...

co-founder Priscilla Chan, and Justine Cassell of

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

, one of the top universities in Computer Science. The list describes the expansion of celebrations globally to include the largest gathering of women in computing in India.

Chapters

ACM-W has nearly 200 active professional, virtual and student chapters globally. The professional chapters serve to enhance communications networks thereby providing resources and support for women in the workforce. The student chapters serve to increase recruitment and retention of women in computing fields at the university level and offer student activities and projects that aim to improve the working and learning environments for women in computing.

Awards

Starting in 2006, ACM-W has offered an annual Athena Lecturer Award to honor outstanding women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science: * 2006–2007: Deborah Estrin of

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

* 2007–2008:

Karen Spärck Jones Karen Ida Boalth Spärck Jones (26 August 1935 – 4 April 2007) was a self-taught programmer and a pioneering British computer and information scientist responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency (IDF), a technology that unde ...

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

* 2008–2009:

Shafi Goldwasser Shafrira Goldwasser (; born 1959) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. A winner of the Turing Award in 2012, she is the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a professor o ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

and the Weitzmann Institute of Science * 2009–2010: Susan J. Eggers of the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

* 2010–2011: Mary Jane Irwin of the

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

* 2011–2012: Judith S. Olson of the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

* 2012–2013:

Nancy Lynch Nancy Ann Lynch (born January 19, 1948) is a computer scientist affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the NEC Professor of Software Science and Engineering in the EECS department and heads the "Theory of Distributed ...

* 2013–2014: Katherine Yelick of LBNL * 2014–2015: Susan Dumais of

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

* 2015–2016:

Jennifer Widom Jennifer Widom (born ) is an American computer scientist known for her work in database systems and data management. She is notable for foundational contributions to semi-structured data management and data stream management systems. Since 2017 ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

* 2016–2017: Jennifer Rexford of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

*2017–2018: Lydia Kavraki of

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

*2018–2019: Andrea Goldsmith of Princeton University *2019–2020: Elisa Bertino of

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

*2020–2021: Sarit Kraus of

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...

*2021–2022: Ayanna Howard of

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

*2022–2023:

Éva Tardos Éva Tardos (born 1 October 1957) is a Hungarian mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Tardos's research interest is algorithms. Her work focuses on the design and analysis of efficient ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

ACM-W also offers an ACM-W Networking Award for active student chapters.ACM-W Chapter (ACM-W Networking Awards)
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Scholarships

ACM-W provides support for women undergraduate and graduate students in Computer Science and related programs to attend research conferences. The ACM-W scholarships are offered for both intra-continental conference travel, and intercontinental conference travel. Scholarship applications are evaluated in six groups each year, to distribute awards across a range of conferences, including many annual ACM

special interest group A special interest group (SIG) is a community within a larger organization with a shared interest in advancing a specific area of knowledge, learning or technology where members cooperate to effect or to produce solutions within their particular f ...

conferences such as SIGACCESS,

SIGACT ACM SIGACT or SIGACT is the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory, whose purpose is support of research in theoretical computer science. It was founded in 1968 by Patrick C. Fischer. Publi ...

SIGAI ''Sigai'' () is a 2017 Tamil language drama film directed by Jagadeesan Subu. The movie has Kathir in the lead role while Meera Nair, Raj Bharath, Riythvika, and Mayilsamy are in supporting roles. Kathir plays the role of a transgender perso ...

, SIGARCH,

SIGCOMM SIGCOMM is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Data Communications, which specializes in the field of communication and computer networks. It is also the name of an annual 'flagship' conference, organized by SIGCOMM ...

, SIGCHI, SIGCSE,

SIGDA SIGDA, Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Design Automation, is a professional development organization for the electronic design automation (EDA) community. SIGDA is organized and operated exclusively for educationa ...

, SIGECOM, SIGEVO,

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

, SIGHPC, SIGIR, SIGITE, SIGMM, SIGMOBILE, SIGOPS,

SIGPLAN SIGPLAN is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group (SIG) on programming languages. This SIG explores programming language concepts and tools, focusing on design, implementation, practice, and theory. Its members are progra ...

, and

SIGSOFT The Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Software Engineering provides a forum for computing professionals from industry, government and academia to examine principles, practices, and new research results in software ...

Officers

ACM-W officers include: * Ruth G. Lennon, Chair * Reyyan Ayfer, Vice Chair * Melanie Wu, Treasurer * Amelia Cole, Treasurer * Arati Dixit, Standing Committee Chair * Bushra Anjum, Standing Committee Chair * Bettina Bair, Communications Committee Chair * Sarah McRoberts, Communications Committee Chair * Valerie Barr, Past Chair ACM-W regions and chairs are: * Rukiye Altin, Europe Chair * Heena Timani, India Chair * Monica McGill, North America * Jacqueline Tate, Asia Pacific * Hong Gao, China ACM-W Standing Committees and Special Projects include: * Viviana Bono, ACM-W Scholarships * Pamela Wisniewski, ACM / ACM-W Awards Rising Star * Rachelle Hippler, Professional Chapters * Priya Chawla, Next Gen ACM-W Communications Committee members: * Jennifer Goodall, ACM-W Connections Newsletter Editor

References

External links

*
Celebrations of Women in Computing

Women in Computing Oral History Collection

Anita Borg Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Association For Computing Machinery Council on Women in Computing Association for Computing Machinery Information technology organizations Organizations for women in science and technology Women in computing Computer science education