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 member ...

'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 The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. It is the world's largest gathering of women in computing. The celebra ...

was recognized by the US

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

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 maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

Rear Admiral Rear admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, equivalent to a major general and air vice marshal and above that of a commodore and captain, but below that of a vice admiral. It is regarded as a two star "admiral" rank. It is often regarde ...

Grace Hopper Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy Rear admiral (United States), rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I, Harvard Mar ...

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

Anita Hill Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and ...

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 lifetime ...

co-founder

Priscilla Chan Priscilla Chan (born February 24, 1985) is an American philanthropist and a former pediatrician. She and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in December 2015, with a p ...

, and

Justine Cassell Justine M. Cassell (born March 19, 1960) is an American professor and researcher interested in human-human conversation, human-computer interaction, and storytelling. Since August 2010 she has been on the faculty of the Carnegie Mellon Human Compu ...

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, 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. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

* 2007–2008:

Karen Spärck Jones Karen Sparck Jones is a computer science researcher and innovator who pioneered the search engine algorithm known as inverse document frequency (IDF). While many early information scientists and computer engineers were focused on developing progr ...

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

* 2008–2009:

Shafi Goldwasser en, Shafrira Goldwasser , name = Shafi Goldwasser , image = Shafi Goldwasser.JPG , caption = Shafi Goldwasser in 2010 , birth_place = New York City, New York, U.S. , birth_date = , death_date ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

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

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

* 2010–2011:

Mary Jane Irwin Mary Jane Irwin is an Emerita Evan Pugh Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She has been on the faculty at Penn State since 1977. She is an international expert in computer architect ...

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 Pennsylvan ...

* 2011–2012:

Judith S. Olson Judith S. Olson is an American researcher best known for her work in the field of human-computer interaction and the effect of distance on teamwork. Olson began her career at the University of Michigan before later moving to the University of Cal ...

of the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

* 2012–2013: Nancy Lynch of

* 2013–2014:

Katherine Yelick Katherine "Kathy" Anne Yelick is an American computer scientist, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berk ...

LBNL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...

* 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 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, Widom ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

* 2016–2017:

Jennifer Rexford Jennifer Rexford is an American computer scientist who is currently the Gordon Y. S. Wu Professor in Engineering, Professor of Computer Science, and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. Her research focuses on analy ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

*2017–2018:

Lydia Kavraki Lydia E. Kavraki ( el, Λύδια Καβράκη) is a Greek-American computer scientist, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science, a professor of bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering at Rice Unive ...

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

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

Elisa Bertino Elisa Bertino is a professor of computer science at Purdue University and is acting as the research director of CERIAS, the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, an institute attached to Purdue University. Berti ...

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

*2020–2021: Sarit Kraus of

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, he, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן, ''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 i ...

*2021–2022: Ayanna Howard of

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

*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 statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

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 conferences such as

SIGACCESS ACM SIGACCESS is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Accessible computing, an interdisciplinary group of academic and industrial researchers, clinicians and rehabilitation personnel, policy makers, end users, and ...

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,

SIGARCH ACM SIGARCH is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on computer architecture, a community of computer professionals and students from academia and industry involved in research and professional practice related to compu ...

, SIGCOMM,

SIGCHI The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI). It hosts the flagship annual international HC ...

SIGCSE SIGCSE is the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group (SIG) on Computer Science Education (CSE), which provides a forum for educators to discuss issues related to the development, implementation, and/or evaluation of c ...

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 educati ...

, SIGECOM, SIGEVO,

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference on computer graphics (CG) organized by the ACM SIGGRAPH, starting in 1974. The main conference is held in North America; SIGGRAPH Asia ...

, SIGHPC, SIGIR, SIGITE,

SIGMM ACM Multimedia (ACM-MM) is the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)'s annual conference on multimedia, sponsored by the SIGMM on multimedia in the ACM. SIGMM specializes in the field of multimedia computing, from underlying technologies to ...

SIGMOBILE SIGMOBILE is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing, which specializes in the field of mobile computing and wireless networks and wearable computing. Conceived in early ...

, SIGOPS,

SIGPLAN SIGPLAN is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on programming languages. Conferences * Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) * Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) * International Symposium on M ...

, 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 en ...

Officers

ACM-W officers include: * Jody Tims, 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 Valerie Barr is an American computer scientist, and is the Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Bard College. She formerly held the Jean Sammet endowed chair in the department of Computer Science at Mount Holyoke C ...

, Past Chair ACM-W regions and chairs are: * Ruth G. Lennon, 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 Viviana is a female given name, and may refer to: * ''Viviana'' (film), a 1916 American film * ''Viviana'' (telenovela), a 1978 Mexican telenovela * Saint Bibiana, or Viviana, 4th-century Roman martyr * Viviana (given name) See also * * Bibiana ...

, 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