Informatics Europe Bulletin: Celebrating Gender Equality in Informatics by Award Nominations & Webinars

Informatics Europe

Informatics Europe Bulletin - March 2023

Dear Colleague,

International Women’s Day is a global day in March celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. However, accelerating women’s equality shouldn’t be limited on just one day. In this issue, find out how you can join us to support gender equality in informatics. We also encourage you to show your support to our joint initiative on informatics education for all with our member institutions in Spain. Let’s work together to advance more informatics research and education initiatives to a European level!

In this issue:

Minerva Informatics Equality Award 2023: Calling for Nominations

Sponsored by our industry member Google, the 2023 Minerva Informatics Equality Award is now calling for nominations of successful initiatives which show a measurable impact on the careers of women at all stages.

Until 2022, the award followed a three-year cycle, focusing each year on a different stage of the career pipeline. You can view previous Award submissions here. As we enter the 8th edition this year, the Award focuses on any stage of the career pipeline of women in informatics research and education, including but not limited to:

  • Encouraging female students to enrol in Computer Science/Informatics programmes and retaining them;
  • Supporting the transition for PhD and postdoctoral researchers into faculty positions;
  • Developing the careers of female faculty, including retention and promotion.

The Award carries a prize of 5,000 EUR, which can be given to an individual or to a group. A representative of the winner(s) will be invited to give a short talk on their achievements at the Award ceremony during the 19th European Computer Science Summit (ECSS), held in Edinburgh, UK, between October 23-25, 2023. Noteworthy runners up may also be included as exemplars of best practice in future Informatics Europe publications.

The Award nomination deadline is 30 June 2023. Find out how to get involved on our Award page – we look forward to receiving your submissions!

Making Progress with Informatics Education for School: the Joint Manifesto & the New ACM Inroads Publication

Following our recent successes in Informatics Reference Framework for School and Rome Declaration by the Informatics for All coalition, IE supports our member institutions SCIE and CODDII, two national informatics associations (NIAs) in Spain, in their national efforts to make informatics education a priority. A joint manifesto is issued on 1 March, with SCIE, CODDII and two other organisations to demand the extension of informatics education in all levels of the educational system in Spain. Here is a short summary of what we demand in Spain in the manifesto:

  • informatics should be included as a core subject in all the cycles of education in the next reform of the Education Act;
  • sufficient informatics resources and training should be provided for teachers;
  • a dedicated advocacy is needed to make society - and in particular the younger generations - aware of the importance of creating and using technology with an ethical and humanitarian perspective.

A full English translation of the manifesto is available here. For the original manifesto in Spanish, please visit the manifesto official website. We encourage our followers to sign the manifesto online and show their support to the initiative. This will not only create an impact in Spain, but also potentially increase awareness and positive influence to other European countries on this important subject, of which a recent article “Informatics Education for School – A European Initiative” has been published with the contribution of our IE President Prof. Enrico Nardelli and former Board Director Prof. Michael E. Caspersen. The article is published in the ACM Inroads, a quarterly printed and online magazine for professionals interested in advancing computing education on a global scale. It provides some background and an overview of the recent framework proposed to support the advancement of informatics education at school level across Europe.

Are you interested to learn more about our work and help advocate informatics education for all? Join our Education Research Working Group here.

Award-winning speakers at the Renewed “Gender Equality in Informatics” Webinar Series

With the funding support of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), we are proud to announce our Gender Equality in Informatics Webinar Series is renewed for another season!

First launched in June 2022, this webinar series is one of Informatics Europe contributions in disseminating the work of the COST Action “European Network for Gender Balance in Informatics (EUGAIN)”. Sharing best practices as well as relevant research about gender equality and diversity in computer science, the series is a way to strengthen both the understanding as well as the action perspective of this topic.

In the new season, we will feature colleagues who excel in the area of gender equality in informatics, including some of our previous Minerva Informatics Equality Award winners. The series will kick off again in April, on Mondays at 5pm (CEST), with the following confirmed webinars:

All webinars are free and open to all. Webinar abstracts, speaker bios and previous webinar materials can be found here. We look forward to welcoming you again and continuing our discussions on achieving gender equality in informatics!

EUGAIN at womENcourage 2023 – Young Researchers and Innovators Wanted!

The COST Action EUGAIN will join the womENcourage 2023, the 10th ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: a three-day conference hosted by our member institute the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, between 20 and 22 September.

EUGAIN will run a co-located event during day 1 and day 2 of womENcourage 2023. The first day, co-organised by the EUGAIN’s Young Researchers and Innovators team, will be dedicated to talks and workshops aiming at building bridges between academia and industry; if interested in supporting this organizing team, please send a short application to Anna Szlávi by 24 March with the following information: why you would like to join the team, how you could contribute, and one specific idea such as a track, a speaker, or an activity. You will be notified of the application result by 1 April.

Association News

Board Meetings

  • 31 March (Fri), 16:00-17:00, Zoom
  • 28 April (Fri), 16:00-17:00, Zoom
Don’t forget: As a member representative, you can submit agenda topics and participate as an observer in board meetings. Let us know if you’d like to join us!

Executive Committee Meetings

  • 24 March (Fri), 09:00-16:00, Rome
  • 25 May (Thu), 09:00-16:30, Zurich

National Informatics Associations Meeting

  • 21 April (Fri), 11:00-17:00, Paris
European-level collaborations: Are you looking for European experts and expertise to support your national initiative, or even elevate it to the European level? Read more about our work with National Informatics Associations and how your institution and your country can benefit from it.

Don’t Miss These IE Activities

  • Are you a leader with significant, formal leadership role? Or are you planning to take on such a role in the near future? Then don’t miss our Residential Academic Leadership Course between 27-30 June 2023 in Austria! The 4-day-3-night course is an ideal getaway to reflect on your leadership in a relaxing environment at Krainerhütte, a 4-star hotel in Baden bei Wien. You will be guided by our experienced leadership facilitators Geraldine Fitzpatrick (TU Wien, Austria) and Austen Rainer (Queen’s University Belfast, UK), with both structured and informal activities to help you rethink leadership pathways for diverse scenarios. Click here to learn more about the course - register on or before 28 April to enjoy the limited early bird offers!
  • Deadline extended: complete the survey about Diversity & Inclusion initiatives here by 30 March. Your answers will contribute to the mapping study project led by IE’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group.

Members News

Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria – PERISCOPE: Five massive open online courses on data science, policy making and pandemic management

A consortium of 32 top European universities and associations of professionals worked together for the last two years to study data, policies, actions, and effects of pandemic management. This activity was conducted within the PERISCOPE research project, in which Prof. Marco Brambilla’s research group at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano is participating. Besides the high-impact research results, the consortium worked on implementing educational materials and courses.

Among those, five online courses (MOOCs) that collect technical and policy solutions to pandemic challenges have been published on Coursera, including “Data Science Perspectives on Pandemics Management”, resulted from the collaboration between Politecnico di Milano, University of Pavia, ISI Foundation, and the Delft University of Technology. Ahead of the publication, the courses were tested by health authorities and other public bodies. Find out more about these courses here.

Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Institute Industrial IT – Submitting papers to the INDIN2023 conference

The deadline for submitting papers to the #INDIN2023 conference has been extended to 31 March 2023. This year the conference is hosted by Institute Industrial IT of Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe and Fraunhofer IOSB-INA. The INDIN international conference provides a forum for presentation and discussion of the state-of-art and future perspectives of industrial information technologies. Industry experts, researchers and academics gather together to share ideas and experiences surrounding frontier technologies, breakthroughs, innovative solutions, research results, as well as initiatives related to industrial informatics and their applications.

All researchers and experts in the fields such as Industrial Informatics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Optimization & Control are encouraged to submit their papers and share their latest research, applications, and experiences at the INDIN2023 conference. Read more about the conference here.

University of Groningen, Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence – Call for papers: 27th International EDOC Conference (EDOC 2023)

Between 30 October and 3 November, EDOC 2023 will be hosted by the Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Groningen, in Groningen, the Netherlands. It will be collocated with the 29th International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS).

EDOC conferences traditionally provide a key forum for researchers and practitioners in the field of Enterprise Design, Operations and Computing, by addressing the full range of models, methodologies, and engineering technologies contributing to building and evolving intra- and inter-enterprise software systems.

The conference now calls for contributions with a special emphasis on the theme of designing and operating “Sustainable Enterprises” to reflect the global developments toward sustainable living. The conference welcomes high-quality scientific submissions and experience papers from industry. Additionally, expert panel discussions and keynotes will address current topics and issues in this domain. Abstract submission deadline is 21 May. For submission guidelines, please visit the conference website here.

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