ACM MemberNet - Spring 2026

May 14, 2026

ACM General Election - Ballots due May 22

The deadline for voting in the 2026 ACM General Election is 16:00 UTC, 22 May 2026. To access the secure voting site, please visit the General Election page. If you would like to request a paper ballot, please e-mail Election Services Corporation at [email protected] or call toll-free at +1.866.720.4357. If you have already voted, thank you for your participation!

AWARDS & MEMBER RECOGNITION

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard Receive the 2024 ACM A.M. Turing Award

2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipients Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard

Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard received the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their essential role in establishing the foundations of quantum information science and transforming secure communication and computing. Bennett and Brassard are widely recognized as founders of quantum information science, a field at the intersection of physics and computer science that treats quantum mechanical phenomena not merely as properties of matter, but as resources for processing and transmitting information. Their work has influenced cryptography, algorithm design, computational complexity, learning theory, interactive proofs, and mathematical physics, while their research helped catalyze a generation of physicists and computer scientists to work across disciplinary boundaries. Read the news release.

Matei Zaharia Receives the 2025 ACM Prize in Computing

2025 ACM Prize in Computing recipient Matei Zaharia

Matei Zaharia of the University of California, Berkeley, received the 2025 ACM Prize in Computing for his visionary development of distributed data systems and computing infrastructure which has enabled large-scale machine learning, analytics, and AI at a global scale. Zaharia is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Co-Founder and CTO of Databricks. Zaharia’s doctoral dissertation on Apache Spark received the 2014 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. Read the press release.

Ricardo Baeza-Yates Receives Inaugural Luiz André Barroso Award

Luiz André Barroso Award recipient Ricardo Baeza-Yates

Ricardo Baeza-Yates received the 2025 ACM Luiz André Barroso Award for his pioneering contributions to algorithms and information retrieval as well as his leadership in fostering a vibrant transnational research community across Latin America. Baeza-Yates is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost researchers in information retrieval, celebrated especially for pioneering innovative data structures that have shaped the field. He has also played a pivotal role in strengthening the Latin American computing community, leading to a vibrant technology sector in Chile reflected in today’s moniker of “Chilecon Valley.” Read the press release.

Nicki Washington Receives the 2025 ACM Fran Allen Award

ACM Fran Allen Award recipient Nicki Washington

ACM named Nicki Washington as the recipient of the 2025 ACM Frances E. Allen Award for Outstanding Mentoring. Washington is recognized for exceptional commitment to diversifying the computing community at all education levels, demonstrating creativity and breadth in her approaches. She is the Cue Family Professor of the Practice of Computer Science and Professor of the Practice of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Duke University. Read the news release.

Monika Henzinger Named 2026-2027 Athena Lecturer

2025-2026 Athena Lecturer Monika Henzinger

ACM has named Monika Henzinger of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) as the 2026-2027 ACM Athena Lecturer. Henzinger is recognized for outstanding contributions to the fields of dynamic graph algorithms and web algorithms, and for dedicated mentoring and service to these communities. She has also made significant contributions to dynamic algorithms. In addition to her technical contributions, she is a prominent leader in the research community. Read the news release.

Call for ACM Award Nominations

Each year, ACM recognizes technical and professional achievements within the computing and information technology community through its celebrated Awards Program. ACM welcomes nominations for candidates whose work exemplifies the best and most influential contributions to our community, and seeks your help in expanding and diversifying the nomination pool for our ACM Awards. Please take a moment to consider those people in your community who may be suitable for nomination. Refer to the award nominations page for links to individual award pages, where you will find nomination requirements, deadlines, and Award Subcommittee Members. Nominations for most awards are due December 15, 2026. The next nomination deadline for ACM Distinguished Members is August 1, 2026.

ACM PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

ACM Fellow Katherine Yelick to Head Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

ACM Fellow Katherine Yelick has been appointed the next director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Yelick worked with senior managers across the U.S. Department of Energy national lab complex to launch the Exascale Computing Initiative, which ran from 2016 to 2024 and developed the applications and software needed to make effective use of exascale-capable hardware. Her research focuses on high-performance computing, programming languages, compilers, and parallel algorithms. Read more here.

In Memoriam: Michael O. Rabin

ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Michael O. Rabin has passed away at the age of 94. Rabin, along with Dana S. Scott, received the Turing Award for their joint paper "Finite Automata and Their Decision Problem," which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines and proved to be an enormously valuable concept. Their classic paper has been a continuous source of inspiration for subsequent work in this field. Rabin was an ACM Fellow, and also received the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for the development of efficient randomized tests of primality. Read more here.

In Memoriam: Tony Hoare

ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Charles Antony ("Tony") Richard Hoare has passed away at the age of 92. Hoare is best known as the creator of the Quicksort algorithm, which he invented in 1959 and remains one of the fastest ways to sort data. Later, he devised Hoare logic, based on the Hoare triple, an important tool in reasoning about, and formally verifying, programs. He also published the Communicating Sequential Processes model which guides how many programming languages handle concurrent operations. He received the Turing Award in 1980 for his fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages. Read more here.

Bengio to Co-Chair UN’s AI Panel

ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Yoshua Bengio will co-chair a new UN I ndependent International Scientific Panel on AI alongside Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa. The 40-member panel brings together experts from academia, government, industry and civil society to produce evidence-based research on AI’s technical progress, safety, policy, and societal effects. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the group is “in a race against time.” Read more here.

PUBLIC POLICY

AI Safety Is More Than a Technical Problem

At the AI Impact Summit 2026 held in India, the ACM Technology Policy Council organized a session titled "From Technical Safety to Societal Impact: Rethinking AI Governance," with a multidisciplinary panel of researchers, policymakers, and civil society leaders discussing the gap between what technical fixes can solve and what institutional, cultural, and political conditions actually shape. This brief session overview covers the variety of important and pressing topics concerning artificial intelligence such as AI's impact on society, human rights, and democracy, real world action versus platitudes, and more. Learn more here.

ACM USTPC Response to NIST RFI

The ACM US Technology Policy Committee has issued a response to NIST RFI: Towards Best Practices for Automated Benchmark Evaluations. The response is divided into four separate questions coveri ng subjects such as the usefulness and relative importance of the included practices and principles, emerging practices vs. existing best practices, and more—with each question approached in two sections: "General Feedback" and "Specific Areas to Address." Learn more here.

Calibrating Oversight for Agentic Frontier Models

The EU Digital Omnibus package put forward by the European Commission including the AI-specific proposal amending the AI Act could respond to the rapidly improving cyber-relevant capabilities of advanced agentic AI systems. While the ETPC supports the European Commission’s intent to simplify the regulatory burden, the sequencing of implementation must not create gaps in technical oversight. This document argues that simplification must be paired with robust technical oversight for high-capability systems. Learn more here.

View on Demand: ETPC's Panel Discussion on Europe’s Digital Omnibus"

View ACM's Europe Technology Policy Committee panel “Europe’s Digital Omnibus: A New Digital Regime or Simplification?,” a timely panel discussion on Europe's constellation of landmark updates to existing regulations which will reshape how technology companies operate across the continent. From the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act to the AI Act, Data Act, and beyond, the EU has positioned itself as a global standard-setter. But as policy makers review the complexity of each and want to simplify, who will benefit and who bears the cost. View the panel here.

TechBrief on "Vibe Coding"

AI-Assisted Software Development, often referred to as “Vibe Coding,” is the practice of using generative AI to create or modify software systems. "TechBrief: AI-Assisted Software Development, or Vibe Coding: Beneﬁts and Risks of AI-Driven Software Development" considers both the risks and benefits of Vibe Coding, concluding that existing techniques for improving code quality can be applied to both human- and AI-generated code, and that such techniques will be needed to make vibe coding a cost-effective and secure alternative to traditional software development.

TechBrief: "Buy Versus Build an LLM"

Large Language Models (LLMs) are emerging as critical digital infrastructure for both public services and state functions. "TechBrief: Buy Versus Build an LLM,” examines the trade-offs governments face when deciding whether to build AI systems domestically or procure them externally, and provides a strategic framework for making decisions by evaluating options across dimensions including sovereignty, safety, cost, resource capability, cultural fit, and sustainability.

CONFERENCES

L@S, June 29 - July 3

The Learning at Scale community investigates large-scale, technology-mediated learning environments that typically have many active learners and few experts on hand to guide their progress or respond to individual needs. The conference will be part of the Festival of Learning 2026. Workshops and tutorials include Culturally-Aware Tutoring Systems," "Ethical AI and Education: The need for international regulation to foster human rights, democracy and equity," "Open Learner Models in the Age of Generative AI," and more. The event will be held in Seoul, South Korea. Learn more here.

ACM Conference on AI and Agentic Systems

The ACM Conference on AI and Agentic Systems (CAIS 2026) is the inaugural ACM conference dedicated to the design, evaluation, and engineering of compound and agentic AI systems. The conference focuses on system-level architectures—such as retrieval-augmented generation, multi-agent workflows, and verification pipelines—and emphasizes reproducibility through artifact-centric review. CAIS 2026 will be held May 26 – 29, 2026 in San Jose, California, USA. Learn more here.

ACM AI Leadership Summit

The ACM AI Leadership Summit 2026 will bring together leading researchers, educators, policymakers, and practitioners to examine foundational technical challenges and emerging opportunities in artificial intelligence. Through keynotes, panels, and interactive sessions, the Summit will explore frontier AI models, AI-powered scientific discovery, the future of work, and approaches for responsible, transparent, and human-centered innovation across diverse application domains. The event will be held Aug 30 – September 2, 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Learn more here.

SIG NEWS & AWARDS

SIG Elections

The following SIGs are holding elections until 27 May 2026 (16:00 UTC): SIGDOC, SIGSIM, SIGSPATIAL, SIGUCCS. Please use your ACM web account credentials to log into the voting site. Please note that the ACM web account must be associated with your active ACM/SIG member record. More information here.

SIGGRAPH 2026 Registration Now Open

Registration is open for SIGGRAPH 2026, taking place 19–23 July in Los Angeles. SIGGRAPH 2026 is where ideas don’t stay in their lanes; they stretch, shift, and become something else entirely. It’s a space where researchers, artists, engineers, and storytellers meet at the edges of their work, compare notes, and push what’s possible in computer graphics and interactive techniques. Attendees will experience a cross-section of the industry’s most exciting work, from AI and robotics to immersive experiences, simulation, animation, and real-time innovation. Register now and step into the conversations already taking shape. Learn more here.

SIGUCCS Penny Crane Award

Lisa Brown and Laurie Fox have been named the SIGUCCS 2025 Penny Crane Award recipients. The award was established to honor the memory of Penny Cran e, who served in many capacities for both ACM and SIGUCCS including SIGUCCS board chair from 1986 to 1990. For many of our members, Penny comes to mind when service to SIGUCCS is mentioned. Learn more here.

2026 SIGCHI Awards

The 2026 ACM SIGCHI awardees, Academy inductees, and Special Recognition recipients have been announced. This year, SIGCHI received 107 nominations in the categories of Lifetime Research, Lifetime Service, Academy, Societal Impact, Outstanding Dissertation, and Special Recognition; 29 nominees were selected for recognition. Learn more here.

Best Paper Awards Given at Recent ACM SIG Conferences

ACM's Special Interest Groups (SIGs) regularly cite outstanding individuals for their contributions in 37 distinct technological fields. Some awards presented (or to be presented) at conferences:

You can find them all here.

PUBLISHING NEWS

AI Letters Inaugural Issue

ACM AI Letters (AILET), a premier rapid-publication venue for impactful, concise, and timely communications in AI, has published its inaugural issue. Bridging a crucial gap between traditional conferences and journals, AILET features short, peer-reviewed contributions that accelerate knowledge dissemination across academia and industry. This unique publication prioritizes theoretical breakthroughs, algorithmic innovation, practical real-world applications, and critical societal implications including ethics, policy, and responsible AI. Learn more here.

Communications of the ACM Call for Practice Section

Communications of the ACM 's freshly rebooted Practice section is open for business and accepting submissions. CACM EIC Jim Larus and Practice Section Chair Terence Kelly will consider submissions on any topic of broad interest to the world’s computing practitioners—both the five million working in the U.S. and the millions more in other countries. Learn more here.

Communications of the ACM Searching for News Board Chair(s)

Communications of the ACM is searching for a chair or co-chairs for its News Board. The News Board chair will work with a diverse, worldwide board to identify stories early, assist professional writers in identifying reputable, qualified sources, and review articles to ensure quality and accuracy. The ideal candidate will have a broad exposure to computing, contacts across the field, and a passion for communicating new ideas. If you are interested in this position, please send a short statement explaining why and how you would go about finding new ideas for news stories to [email protected].

acmqueue: "On the Evolution of Program State"

Pau l Vixie gives a way to think about the larger-scoped forces shaping both the history and opportunities of software engineering safety. Today's AI coding assistants augur an era when more software will be created than ever before and by more people and agents than ever before. It's undecided as yet whether this era will be safer or more dangerous than the last. If we merely produce more software faster, the likely outcome should worry us. Read the full article here.

New ACM Books

Turing’s Children: How His Ideas Have Shaped the Modern World by Devdatt Dubhashi, Alessandro Panconesi, and Gerardo Schneider makes the complex ideas in the work of the Turing Prize winners accessible to a broad audience. This book explores the profound legacy of Alan Turing, and how his five great ideas have been developed by the winners of the Turing Prize to shape the digital world we live in today.

Journals Welcome New Editor-in-Chiefs

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS) has named Sudeep Pasricha as Editor-in-Chief for the term of April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2029. Pasricha is the Aram and Helga Budak Endowed Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Computer Science, and the Department of Systems Engineering at Colorado State University.

ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG) has named Michael A. Bender as Editor-in-Chief for the term of December 1, 2026 to November 30, 2029. Bender is the John L. Hennessy Chaired Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University.

ACM Games: Research and Practice welcomes Catherine Flick and Laurissa Tokarchuk as new Co-Editors-in-Chief. The appointment is from April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2029. Flick is a Professor of Ethics and Games Technology at the University of Staffordshire. Tokarchuk is a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London.

ACM Open Update: UK and USA New Institutions

ACM continues its ACM Open partnership with UK Higher Education Institutions (UK HEI) through 2030. In addition to the 93 renewing UK institutions, Bournemouth University, University of Nottingham, and University of Surrey have recently joined ACM Open.

The following high publishing institutions in the US have also recently joined ACM Open and are now able to publish articles open access without APCs: New York University, North Carolina State University, Penn State University, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and University of Pennsylvania.

View our full list of 3000+ ACM Open institutions around the world here.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

Voices of ACM-W Podcast

Voices of ACM-W — Stories Behind Our Work is a conversation series from ACM-W, the global community supporting women in computing within the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This podcast spotlights the women who volunteer their time, leadership, and expertise to support, celebrate, and advocate for Women in Computing. In this podcast, we explore the lived experiences behind community-building — mentorship, advocacy, resilience, and the often invisible labor that sustains inclusive computing spaces. The first two episodes are available:

2023 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award recipient Shaundra Daily shares her journey from fascination with mysteries in high school to MIT’s Media Lab, highlighting the importance of structural support and stubborn resilience.
Audrey Mbogho—machine learning researcher, educator, and long-standing ACM-W volunteer—speaks about community, leadership, and the care required to sustain inclusive spaces in technology.

ACM-W Rising Star Award Recipient: Maria Christakis

Maria Christakis is this year’s recipient of the ACM-W Rising Star Award! Christakis is a professor at TU Wien, where she leads the Software Engineering research unit. Her research develops techniques and tools to improve the reliability and trustworthiness of software, with contributions spanning program analysis, verification, testing, and debugging. The ACM-W Rising Star Award recognizes a woman whose early-career research has had a significant impact on the computing discipline. Read more here

Words Matter

As part of ACM’s efforts to combat exclusion in the computing profession, ACM's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council has launched an effort to replace offensive or exclusionary terminology in the computing field. They have developed a list of computing terms to be avoided in professional writing and presentations and offer alternative language. The Council has recently expanded the list and invites the community to submit suggestions for consideration.

LEARNING PROGRAMS

ACM ByteCast Interviews

ACM ByteCast is a podcast series from ACM’s Practitioner Board in which hosts Rashmi Mohan, Bruke Kifle, Scott Hanselman, Sabrina Hsueh, and Harald Störrle interview researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice. In each monthly episode, guests will share their experiences, the lessons they’ve learned, and their own visions for the future of computing. Recent ByteCast interviews include:

2024 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award recipient Peter Stone, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and Chief Scientist at Sony AI, explores the intersection of professional research and personal passion, detailing how his lifelong love for soccer fueled his involvement in RoboCup, and much more.
Monica Bertagnolli, surgical oncologist, physician-scientist, and President Elect of the National Academy of Medicine, shares her unique journey from Princeton engineering to cancer surgery and national leadership emphasizing collaboration, system thinking, and bringing an engineering mindset of “pilot, test, scale, and continuously improve” to AI in healthcare.
Ray Eitel-Porter, Senior Advisor for AI at Accenture and an Intellectual Forum Senior Research Associate at Jesuit College, the University of Cambridge, shares how he was inspired to research responsible AI by data privacy concerns and how biased datasets harm models, discusses case studies from his book where companies successfully implement responsible AI practices in the workplace, and more.

Listen to ACM ByteCast interviews here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Featured TechTalks

ACM members and non-members alike are welcome to attend our popular series of free TechTalks by expert industry professionals, distinguished ACM award laureates, and visionary researchers from industry and academia. Recent TechTalks include:

In "Toward a Quantum-Native Internet from Architecture to Protocol Organization," Angela Sara Cacciapuoti, Full Professor of Quantum Communications and Networks at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) and a co-founder of the Quantum Internet Research Group, discusses emerging “quantum-native” tenets spanning architecture and protocol organization.
In "A Practical Introduction to Agentic Coding," Microsoft Senior Developer Advocate Marlene Mhangami shares how she gets the most out of agents in her development workflow using GitHub Copilot SDK and GitHub CLI. She walks walk through how she uses MCP (Model Context Protocol), Agent Skills and Instructions to create semi-autonomous agents that can complete multi-step tasks end-to-end.

EDUCATION

GenAI and Student Programming Assessment

The ACM Task Force on Generative Artificial Intelligence and Student Programming Assessment was formed to track the evolution of approaches to teaching programming in the era of GenAI, document concrete examples of integration strategies, and assemble emerging best practices to support instructors in adapting their courses and assessments. Visit the Task Force website to view its recent report (based on a survey of more than 700 educators), explore community approaches to integrating GenAI into computing education, as well as to contribute an approach.

MEMBERSHIP

Featured Member Benefit: Upgrade Your Tech HP

Upgrade your tech with everyday savings up to 40%. Shop HP’s assortment of performance PCs, Monitors, Accessories, Print Solutions and Gaming needs. Financing available.

STUDENT NEWS

XRDS is Seeking Volunteers

XRDS, ACM’s flagship student publication, is seeking volunteers. If you are a graduate student located in the U.S. or abroad who is interested in cutting-edge research in computer science and viewpoints on technology's impact on the world today, we want you! To apply, send your CV here along with a short 150-word personal statement, and include the subject line "XRDS Volunteer."

Upcoming ACM Student Research Competitions: Submission Deadlines

ACM Student Research Competitions (SRCs) offer a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research at well-known ACM-sponsored and co-sponsored conferences before a panel of judges and attendees. The most recent SRC winners were presented at ICSE 2026. The next conferences accepting submissions are:

ICSE 2027, April 25-May 1, 2027
Submission deadline: November 13, 2026
SIGCSE 2027, February 17-20, 2027
Submission deadline: September 30, 2026
PACT 2026, October 4-9, 2026
Submission deadline: August 21, 2026
SC 2026, November 15-20, 2026
Submission deadline: August 1, 2026
MICRO 2026, Oct 31-Nov 4, 2026
Submission deadline: August 1, 2026
ESWEEK 2026, October 4-9, 2026
Submission deadline: July 31, 2026
SIGSPATIAL 2026, Nov 3-6 , 2026
Submission deadline: July 10, 2026
SPLASH 2026, October 3-9, 2026
Submission deadline: June 26, 2026
ASSETS 2026, October 3-9, 2026
Submission deadline: June 24, 2026
SOSP 2026, September 29-October 2, 2026
Submission deadline: June 12, 2026

CHAPTER NEWS

Welcome New ACM Chapters

Chapters are the "local neighborhoods" of ACM. The regional ACM Professional, Student, ACM-W, and Special Interest Group (SIG) chapters around the globe involve members locally in competitions, seminars, lectures, workshops, and networking opportunities. 52 Student and 11 Professional Chapters were started in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, India, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the Unites States. ACM Welcomes New Chapters Chartered January 22 - April 23, 2026.

ACM Congratulates the Student Chapter Excellence Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2025–2026 Student Chapter Excellence Awards! This program recognizes ACM student chapters worldwide that demonstrate exceptional initiative throughout the academic year. Chapters submit applications across five categories, and each winning chapter receives a $500 award along with a “Best of” icon to proudly display on its website.

The 2025–2026 winners are:

Outstanding Chapter Activities: University of Texas at Dallas ACM Student Chapter
Outstanding Chapter Website: University of Florida ACM-W Student Chapter
Outstanding Recruitment: PICT ACM Student Chapter
Outstanding Community Service: BITS, Pilani - Dubai ACM Student Chapter
Outstanding School Service: VIT University ACM Student Chapter

To explore the winning submissions and learn how to enter your chapter in next year’s competition, please visit the Student Chapter Excellence Awards website.

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS PROGRAM

ACM Distinguished Speaker: Jingren Zhou

Jingren Zhou is the Chief Technology Officer at Alibaba Cloud, where he drives technology innovation and product development across a wide range of cloud computing services. He also leads the development of AI foundation models, such as Qwen and Wan models, and their applications in diverse business applications within Alibaba Cloud. His lectures include "Building Foundation Models at Scale: System Experiences and Challenges." For more information about Zhou, please visit his DSP speaker information page.

All speakers are available through ACM's ACM Distinguished Speaker Program.

ACM Book Club #3: User Friendly

In User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant reveal the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need. Join in a discussion of the book on May 29, 2026 at 6:00 pm EDT, with special speaker and the co-author Cliff Kuang. Register here.

ACM CAREER & JOB CENTER

The Ultimate Career Development Destination

Connecting with the right employers in computing can be a daunting task. The ACM Career & Job Center is a true career planning destination. Whether you are seeking Career Insights, Career Advice, or Career Coaching, ACM can help.

Read past issues of MemberNet online in our archive.

Is there a person, event, or issue you'd like to see covered? Please email [email protected].

ACM MemberNet - Spring 2026