We are the Sarajevo ACM-W chapter, the first ACM-Women Professional Chapter in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our goal is to promote interest and progress in the fields of science and engineering. On June 23, 2022, we celebrated the International Women in Engineering Day, and our event has been selected to be included in the chapter spotlight section.
Further deepening our engagement with ACM-W activities, the Chapter Chair, Dr. Amal Mersni and Chapter Member Mr. Denis Suljaković, visited Cyprus for the 9th ACM Celebration of Women in Computing womENcourage. ACM-W Sarajevo team presented their poster and the work they did (Mersni A., Buyukdagli O., Copra S., Khatib C. CML – Simulation-based software: an effective educational tool for distance learning. ACM womENcourage 2022. P. 1.). The topic of the event was Drawing New Lines in Science, and it is safe to say that many dots have been connected by drawing those lines.
The event hosted two keynote topics: Dr. Sophia Ananiadou from The University of Manchester talked about Emotion detection from social media. The keynote showcased different approaches to emotion recognition and the way in which it holds the key to several NLP applications. The second keynote topic was a panel discussion on Perspectives of Success in Technology, which hosted 5 very successful women from both academia and the industry, sharing their stories with the audience.
The participants had the pleasure of attending many workshops during the event, with topics ranging from Ethics and Equity in AI and inspiring women to pursue a career in IT, all the way to Visual art and Algorithms. A very interesting workshop talked about Skills for STEAM Entrepreneurship.
Lastly, there was a very nice closing ceremony, with prizes and an announcement of the topic and location for the next celebration, which will be taking place in Trondheim, Norway in 2023. We also used the opportunity to promote our upcoming international event, which will be hosted in spring of 2023.
