ACM-W

ACM-W
Name	ACM-W
Caption	Association for Computing Machinery's Council on Women in Computing
Formation	2006
Type	Professional organization
Headquarters	New York City
Location	International
Leader title	Chair

ACM-W is a professional group supporting women in computing through conferences, scholarships, networking, and advocacy. It operates within the larger context of the Association for Computing Machinery, engaging members across academic, industrial, and governmental institutions. ACM-W connects constituencies associated with Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, E. W. Dijkstra, Donald Knuth, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Margaret Hamilton, Radia Perlman, Tim Berners-Lee, James Gosling, Bjarne Stroustrup, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Vint Cerf, Robert Metcalfe, Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Barbara Liskov, Frances Allen, C. A. R. Hoare, Peter Naur, Seymour Cray, Joseph Weizenbaum, Ivan Sutherland, Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon, John McCarthy, Leslie Lamport, Michael O. Rabin, Dana Scott, John Hopcroft, Robert Tarjan, Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, Leslie Valiant, Judea Pearl, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Niklaus Wirth, Alonzo Church, Stephen Cook, Shimon Peres, Ray Solomonoff, Hugh Everett, Noam Chomsky, Claude E. Shannon, Ada Byron, Sofia Kovalevskaya, Emmy Noether, Rosalind Franklin, Katherine Johnson, Mae Jemison.

History

ACM-W emerged from advocacy efforts linked to prominent events such as the Grace Hopper Celebration, the ACM SIGGRAPH Conference, the ACM SIGPLAN Conference, the ACM SIGCOMM Conference, the ACM SIGMOD Conference, the ACM SIGIR Conference, ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and the ACM International Conference on Multimedia. Founders and early leaders drew inspiration from figures associated with Bell Labs, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Intel Corporation, Google, Apple Inc., Facebook, Amazon (company), HP, Xerox PARC, NASA, European Organization for Nuclear Research, National Science Foundation, DARPA, and universities such as MIT, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Princeton University, Caltech, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, ETH Zurich, Tsinghua University, Peking University, University of Tokyo, Australian National University, University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Waterloo, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and Indian Institute of Science. Milestones overlapped with policy shifts exemplified by initiatives from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, European Commission, Council of Europe, and national funding agencies.

Organization and Structure

The organization mirrors structures seen in Association for Computing Machinery, with governance roles comparable to chairs and committees in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, British Computer Society, Computer Science Teachers Association, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and The Alan Turing Institute. Regional activities have affinities with groups such as ACM SIGMOD, ACM SIGPLAN, ACM SIGARCH, ACM SIGOPS, ACM SIGMETRICS, ACM SIGBED, ACM SIGACT, and ACM SIGCHI. Administrative nodes coordinate with professional bodies including IEEE Computer Society, Royal Society, National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and universities listed above. Leadership cycles, bylaws, and committee charters reflect models used by Association for Women in Mathematics and Society of Women Engineers.

Programs and Initiatives

Programs include student scholarships, travel grants, mentorship schemes, and regional conferences patterned after Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Women in Data Science, NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ACL (conference), EMNLP, and KDD. Initiatives partner with organizations such as Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, Women Who Code, AnitaB.org, Code.org, National Center for Women & Information Technology, and TechWomen. Professional development events mirror sessions from SIGCSE Technical Symposium, CRA-WP (Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research), European Women in Mathematics, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics: Women in SIAM, and Women in Machine Learning. Outreach links engage with companies and labs including Google DeepMind, OpenAI, IBM Watson, Microsoft Research Redmond, Facebook AI Research, NVIDIA Research, Apple AI/ML, Intel Labs, Adobe Research, Salesforce Research, and Uber ATG.

Chapters and Membership

Local chapters operate on campuses and in metropolitan regions, collaborating with student groups at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Washington, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Cornell University, Princeton University, Yale University, Brown University, University of Texas at Austin, University of California, San Diego, University of British Columbia, McMaster University, University of Toronto Scarborough, University College London, Imperial College London, King's College London, University of Edinburgh, University of Melbourne, Monash University, University of Sydney, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Seoul National University, KAIST, Yonsei University, Purdue University, Florida State University, University of Illinois Chicago, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Rochester Institute of Technology. Membership categories align with models from Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE. Student chapters coordinate with competitions such as ICPC, Google Summer of Code, Microsoft Imagine Cup, Imagine Cup, ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, and hackathons run by Major League Hacking.

Awards and Recognition

Award programs parallel prizes like the Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Grace Murray Hopper Award, IEEE John von Neumann Medal, Ada Lovelace Award, Women in Tech Awards, and honors from National Science Foundation CAREER, MacArthur Fellows Program, Royal Society Fellowships, IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow, ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award, SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award, and regional distinctions in technology sectors. Scholarships and travel awards have recognized students and researchers from institutions above and from labs such as Bell Labs, IBM Research, Microsoft Research Cambridge, Google Research, Facebook AI Research NY, and DeepMind.

Impact and Advocacy

Advocacy themes intersect with policy debates and initiatives by United Nations, European Commission Horizon 2020, World Economic Forum, Global Partnership for Education, UN Women, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and national science agencies. Impact metrics reference participation shifts at conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, SIGGRAPH, CHINZ (New Zealand), SIGCOMM, SIGMOD, and SIGCHI, and reported outcomes in collaboration with professional societies including CRA (Computing Research Association), AAAS, IEEE, Royal Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and British Computer Society. Partnerships extend to nonprofits and advocacy groups such as AnitaB.org, Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, Women Who Code, and National Center for Women & Information Technology to promote representation in academia and industry.

Category:Professional associations