Computing Systems
Human-Computer Interaction
AI for Social Impact
Health
Education
Energy, IoT and Smart Cities
Development, Economics and Social Policy
Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability
Deployment Experiences and Practitioner Reports
We have assembled a strong set of area chairs and PC members for each track, collectively making a set of 100+ PC members across all tracks from different disciplines. New this year we are also recruiting PC members in order to continue to diversify our reviewers. See below if you’d like to join.
We are hoping to attract strong submissions for every track. We would be very grateful if you could spread the word within your research groups and to relevant collaborators.
Thanks!
Mercy and Kurtis
ACM COMPASS 2021 CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline for submission of full papers: April 7th, 2021
The conference will be held online on June 28 - Jul 02, 2021, co hosted by Monash University, Australia and SRTA-City, Egypt.
Inspired by the broad agenda of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ACM COMPASS 2021 aims to publish significant and original research from a broad array of computer and information sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences and engineering fields that support the growth of sustainable societies worldwide, especially including under-represented and marginalized communities. The ACM COMPASS 2021 conference aims to explicitly promote interdisciplinary research work—including new methodologies, systems, techniques, applications, and behavioral, qualitative, and quantitative studies—that addresses key societal challenges related to sustainability, gender equality, health, education, poverty, accessibility, conservation, climate change, energy, infrastructure, and economic growth, among others. We also welcome research on the ethics of technology, especially from a critical perspective, to discuss limitations and concerns with technology-led solutions for sustainable societies.
In the last year, the global pandemic has served to demonstrate how digital technologies, or lack thereof, can impact on community resilience. In addition to our primary theme, and with the scope of the conference, this year we welcome contributions that discuss the challenges societies face in their use of digital technologies and services to respond to COVID-19.
Interested in participating? New this year we’re recruiting PC members through an open call. Please fill out this survey to indicate your interest and the TPCs will follow up with you.
Important Dates:
Wednesday 7 April 2021, Submission Deadline - Submit at https://acmcompass2021.hotcrp.com/
Friday 21 May 2021, Decisions & Reviews
Friday 4 June 2021, Camera Ready Papers
Monday 28 June - Friday 2 July, Virtual Conference
To ensure strong research contributions, the ACM COMPASS 2021 conference will review papers based on focus tracks corresponding to the research areas they draw upon. The key focal tracks are:
Computing Systems
Human-Computer Interaction
AI for Social Impact
Health
Education
Energy, IoT and Smart Cities
Development, Economics and Social Policy
Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability
Deployment Experiences and Practitioner Reports
AI for Social Impact
Track chair: Fei Fang (CMU, USA)
https://www.isri.cmu.edu/people/core-faculty/fang-fei.html
This track takes paper submissions for new research and development of AI/ML and data science techniques in the context of sustainable societies. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Methods for large-scale data analysis, participatory sensing and crowd-sourced data collection.
Handling of missing, messy, and biased data, including data cleaning, data wrangling, data integration, and domain adaptation methods.
Analysis of massive, complex data sources, such as networked data, satellite data, mobile phone data, time-series, and spatial-temporal data.
Data privacy, security, and anonymity.
FATE (fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics) in AI and ML.
Methods may be applied to relevant areas including but not limited to agriculture, poverty mapping, disease surveillance, speech interfaces, computer vision techniques, etc. We encourage (but do not require) real-world deployment and evaluation of methods in collaboration with public sector partners such as government or NGOs. Submitted papers are expected to present an argument for the (either realized or potential) social impact of the work.
Human-Computer Interaction Track
Track chair: Ishtiaque Ahmed (Univ of Toronto, Canada)
This track takes paper submissions on new research related to, but not limited to:
User interfaces for underserved populations
Human-centered AI
Information and computer ethics
Information system and technology design methodologies
Social relationships and information flows within and across communities
Gender and intersectionality
Other topics related to interactions between technology and society
Computing Systems Track
Track chair: Kurtis Heimerl (Univ of Washington, USA) (PC Co-Chair)
This track takes paper submissions on the design, implementation, and deployment of all forms of networked and software systems for sustainable societies. Topics of interest may include (but not limited to):
Connectivity solutions and measurements
Mobile systems and applications
Spectrum management
Content distribution
Low-cost computing devices
Security and privacy issues
We especially encourage contributions on critical perspectives about technology that may impose limitations on technology-led solutions for sustainable societies.
Global Health
Track chair: Sunandan Chakraborty (Indiana Univ, USA)
https://soic.iupui.edu/people/sunandan-chakraborty/
This track takes papers on all aspects pertaining to the use of computing solutions to address challenges in global health. Topics may include (but not limited to):
AI/ML techniques for global health
EHR analysis
Health policy interventions
Randomized control trials
Bioinformatics and genomics for global health
Mobile health and wearables
Papers may be about novel models/methods, applications or policies in the area of global health.
Education
Track chair: Ahmed Kharrufa (Newcastle University, UK)
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/ahmedkharrufa.html
ahmed.kharrufa@ncl.ac.uk
This track takes paper submissions related the design, development, deployment and evaluation of innovative technologies in educational settings in topics including, but not limited to
Community engagement in formal and informal education
Equality, diversity and inclusion in education
Supporting rural and disadvantaged communities
Sustainable educational technologies and interventions
Emerging technologies in education
Developing collaborative, critical, analytical and creative skills
Educational settings include formal and informal settings for all age groups, physical or online, and from individual to learning at scale.
Energy, IoT, and Smart Cities
Track chair: Rijurekha Sen (IIT Delhi, India)
https://www.cse.iitd.ac.in/~rijurekha/
This track takes paper submissions on topics related to the application of computing and communication technologies, including but not limited to:
IoTs and other systems for improving infrastructure (buildings, energy systems, roads, water and sanitation systems, etc.), agriculture, community engagement and governance
Computing technologies applied in energy and electricity networks
Systems for measurement, monitoring, and/or management of urban environments
Deployment of sensing and communications technologies, case studies, and lessons learned
Security and privacy in energy, IoT, and smart cities applications
Development, Economics, and Social Policy
Daniel Björkegren (Brown University, USA)
https://www.brown.edu/academics/population-studies/people/person/daniel-bj%C3%B6rkegren
This track takes paper submissions from economics, social sciences, and policy that pertain to sustainability and socio-economic development. Specific topics include but are not limited to:
Policy evaluation using randomized control trials or observational data
Measurement using non-traditional data (administrative, satellite, social media, mobile, text, etc.)
AI/ML for social science or economic policy
Development economics studies
Social network analysis
Applications, effects, and regulation of tech in developing societies
We encourage development, economics and policy papers agnostic of the domain of application including public health, financial services, education, agriculture, gender, livelihood, employment, governance systems, and labour rights, among others.
Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability
Track chairs: Mercy Julia Borbor Cordova (ESPOL, Ecuador) (PC Co-chair)
This track takes papers on all aspects of sustainability of the planet pertaining to environmental sciences, climate change and environmental policy. We encourage submissions across a broad spectrum of topics in this space, including but not limited to: Climate change modeling
Environmental scientific studies
Impact of climate change on populations
Sustainable management of natural resources
Environmental policy studies and economics
Studies on the limits of the sustainability of technology
Measuring and evaluating the impact of nature-based strategies
Deployment Experiences and Practitioner Reports
Track chair: Josiah Chavula (UCT, South Africa)
https://josiahchavula.com/
jchavula@cs.uct.ac.za
This track takes long papers on deployment experiences and short papers on practitioner reports, related to technical infrastructure and services, such as community wireless networks and cloudlets. Practitioner reports will discuss approaches used in deployed technology, with the aim to inform on particular aspects of technology used in practice, or describing broad project experiences. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Details of technical infrastructure and services (e.g community wireless networks, cloudlets etc), including social dynamics
Tools and models to simplify deployment, operation and scalability
Evaluations of usage, performance and impact of technologies deployed in the field (e.g network measurements, QoS, QoE, etc)
Strategies for sustainability and maximization of impact
Reflections from long-term deployments
Problem statements that can lead to new research directions regarding expanding access to technology
ACM COMPASS 2021 specifically aims to forge stronger relationships between practitioners and researchers.
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
Full papers will be archival submissions with a length of up to 10 pages, plus references. Papers should represent polished, significant contributions. Authors are encouraged to submit a paper of length proportional to its contribution. Papers should be submitted in the two-column CHI 2020 proceedings format (templates available for LaTeX, Overleaf or Microsoft Word). Submissions must be in the pdf format. All submissions will go through a double blind review process, therefore no author names or affiliations may appear on the title page, and papers should avoid revealing their identity in the text and document metadata. Submissions will be made at https://acmcompass2021.hotcrp.com/
In addition, COMPASS 2021 will have a Posters track for preliminary projects or late-breaking results. Posters are intended to allow presenters to share their latest results or get early feedback on projects. Poster submissions will be limited to 2 pages plus references.
To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, authors of accepted papers or posters can ask that only a one-page abstract appear in the archival proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the full paper. Authors should guarantee the link to the full paper to be reliable for at least two years. This option is available to accommodate subsequent publication in journals that would not consider results that have been published in preliminary form in a conference proceedings.
ACM COMPASS 2021 CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
General conference chairs
Shaimaa Lazem (SRTA-City, Egypt)
Patrick Olivier (Monash, Australia)
Program committee chairs
Mercy Julia Borbor Cordova, (ESPOL, Ecuador)
Kurtis Heimerl (University of Washington, USA)
Track chairs
AI & Social Impact - Fei Feng (CMU, USA)
Deployments and Practitioner Reports - Josiah Chavula (UCT, South Africa)
Development, Economics and Policy - Daniel Bjorkergen (Brown University, USA)
Energy, IoT and Smart Cities - Rijurekha Sen (IIT Delhi, India)
Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability - Mercy Julia Borbor Cordova (ESPOL, Ecuador) (PC Co-chair)
Education - Ahmed Kharrufa (Newcastle University, UK)
HCI - Ishtiaque Ahmed (Univ of Toronto, Canada)
Health - Sunandan Chakraborty (Indiana Univ, USA)
Systems - Kurtis Heimerl (Univ of Washington, USA) (PC Co-Chair)
Virtual Conference Logistics Chairs
Dharshini Chandrasekara (Monash, Australia)
Delvin Varghese (Monash, Australia)
Dan Richardson (Monash, Australia)
Steering committee
Richard Anderson (University of Washington)
Nicola Dell (Cornell Tech)
Melissa Densmore (University of Cape Town)
Carla Gomes (Cornell University)
Aaditeshwar Seth (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
Lakshmi Subramanian (New York University)
Milind Tambe (Harvard)
Bill Thies (Microsoft Research)
Ellen Zegura (Georgia Tech)