The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s first educational and scientific computing society, plans to set up an India office. This will be ACM’s second office outside its New York headquarters. It opened an office in Beijing two months ago.
ACM chief executive John White
ACM works with governments, educational institutions, and industry to develop guidelines on computing curricula and create a conducive environment for research.
A premier membership organization for computing industry professionals, ACM awards the annual Turing Prize, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in computing.
“We have set up a task force under the leadership of IBM India’s chief scientist, C. Mohan,”said John White, CEO of ACM. “P. Anandan, managing director of Microsoft Research, India, will co-chair it and S. Sadagopan will be a special adviser to the task force, which will look into all issues and activities related to ACM’s operations in India,” he said.
“We have around 2,000 members from India divided equally between professionals and students. While we recognize India has a thriving IT services industry, research is largely absent,” White said. “ACM’s aim is to work with all the stakeholders to create a research eco-system in India,” he added. In India, associations such as the Computer Society of India, software lobby Nasscom and hardware industry body MAIT work with educational institutions, Central and state governments on areas related to technical education.