Welcome from the ACM-W Chair

- Valerie Barr, ACM-W Chair

In addition to our usual updates (ACM-W India, scholarships, chapters), this issue of ACM-W Connections features two very interesting stories. Judith Hill, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has provided a very interesting piece about the rich opportunities afforded by working at a U.S. national lab (if there are comparable experiences in government facilities elsewhere, please consider writing an article for us!). Poornima Padmanabhan and Susan Daniel, at Cornell University, have written about the Cornell Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Women’s Group. While you may not have a lot of interest in chemical and biomolecular engineering, there is a lot of interesting material in their article about outreach, mentoring, engaging activities, how to engage younger women and their parents. Enjoy!

News From Our Contributors

On CBE Women and on how we developed W.O.M.E.N. at Cornell University

Poornima Padmanabhan and Susan Daniel describe strategies to recruit and retain women in graduate and post-doctoral levels in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, at Cornell University. Their suggestions are broadly applicable to undergraduate and graduate levels across STEMS disciplines. Read more here.

An Alternative Career Path: A Glimpse at Opportunities at the National Laboratories

Judith C. Hill, a Research and Development Associate in Computational 
Mathematics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, discusses the opportunities available to computing professionals in national laboratories sponsored by the U.S. government. Read more here

ACM-W ACM-W India

Celebration of Women in Computing, Goa, India.

ACM-W India is happy to announce that the Celebration event of Women in Computing is to be held at Goa, India on September 25-26, 2014. The events planned include All India Programming Contest for women, Poster Sessions for students, tutorials, as well as interesting and inspiring talks and panel discussion. For more details refer to the ACM Goa website at http://goa.acm.org/.

News from ACM-W Scholarships

Congratulations to the most recent recipients of the ACM-W scholarships to attend research conferences! The awardees are Joanna Misztal, Zeineb Chelly, Shaza Hanif, Jingyu Li, Hanna-Liisa Pender, Roghayeh Barmaki, Sonal Aggarwal, Tejaswinee Kelkar, Laura Moreno, Alegria Baquero, Elaine Wah, Gloria Leticia Amador Angulo, Jessica Jones, and Martha Pulido . They come from Poland, Tunisia, Pakistan, China, Estonia, Iran, India, Colombia, Ecuador, USA, and Mexico, and they will attend conferences in Slovenia, Canada, Spain, Greece, UK, India, and the USA.

Remember the next round of scholarships is fast approaching. Apply by June 15. Students do not need to have a paper accepted to qualify. For more details, visit http://women.acm.org/scholarship

News from ACM-W Chapters

Last month we wrote about the positive correlation between having an ACM-W Chapter and having a large number of female majors. Our May theme concerns the relationship between ACM-W's Celebrations of Women in Computing and ACM-W Chapters. Chapters help sustain the energy created from a Celebration until the time of the next conference. Many of our new Chapters are popping up in regions where Celebrations occur. The thought for May: Chapters and Celebrations work hand-in-hand to provide continuous, year-round support for women in computing.

Announcements

  • Would you like to contribute an article to the ACM-W Newsletter? With a distribution list reaching thousands of ACM-W members, contributing to the newsletter is a wonderful opportunity to share ideas and information across a wide audience. Submit a proposal for an article http://women.acm.org/submit.