ACM comes to India

BANGALORE, INDIA: Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the educational and scientific computing society is formally launching in India. Starting with Bangalore, it would open up its presence in all major cities soon.

The first event for the ACM community in India is set for January 21, 2010 in Bangalore. It would be formal launch of the Bangalore Chapter. The co-chairs for the Indian chapter are Anand Deshpande, Persistent Systems Ltd., Pune and P. J. Narayanan, IIIT Hyderabad. It has around 15 council member including Sanjeev K. Aggarwal, Dept. of CSE, IIT Kanpur, P. Anandan, Microsoft Research India, M. Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi, Vivek Balaraman, Research and Development, Cognizant, S. Sadagopan, IIIT Bangalore.

Speaking to CIOL, Dr. Anand Despande, co-chair, ACM India and also Chairman and MD Persistent Systems, said that ACM is a premier membership organization for computing professionals. It aims to provide resources on advance computing as a science and a profession; enable professional development; and promote policies and research.

World wide, it has around 20,000 members. The ACM India is an extension to this initiative that would provide a platform to the Indian researches to submit their works to global readers. Despande said, “ACM India has started very recently. We have got around 4000 members, with equal participation from the professional and the student group. There are a few million of people working on software in India, but we are expecting to get around 10,000 members right now.”

“Number of PHD students is very low in India, compared to the global force. The participation of Indian professionals in international journals is equally low. This is also because the students do not write down about their work and findings so often. The organization is intended to help them collaborate and interact with groups who have been submitting their journals and understand the process. The other way to encourage our members is through hosting conferences.”

According the Deshpande, the first major event for the ACM community in India would be held in Bangalore, along with COMPUTE 2010. It would be attended by ACM Turing Award winners, ACM officers, and Indian ACM chapter leaders. Moving ahead, ACM India would introduce its Hyderabad chapter, followed by four others including a west and north chapter and around 10-15 student chapters. Interestingly, it already has five special interest groups and around 32 student group chapter existing in India.

Worldwide, ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Digital Library and Guide to Computing Literature, and serves its global members with journals and magazines, conferences, workshops, electronic forums, and Online Books and Courses.