Summary of Message from the General Chairs

See welcome message for full details.

The 23rd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid) 2023 was successfully held from 1–4 May 2023 at Bangalore, India. This year, the conference welcomed attendees from across the world in a fully in-person format, and for the first time in India at the technology hub of Bengaluru (also called Bangalore). The conference had a robust participation with over 225 registrations from 26 countries. There was also a strong contingent of over 100 students among them, who benefited from the excellent technical program, keynote talks and mentorship opportunities.

The technical program featured 58 full research papers from among 275 submissions, for an acceptance rate of about 21%. These were complemented by 12 peer-reviewed research posters and 21 refereed students and early career researchers posters. As before, the conference hosted the annual TCSC SCALE Challenge, with three entries shortlisted for a live presentation and demonstration. The conference also co-located the 7^th IEEE International Conference on Fog and Edge Computing (ICFEC), and 5 workshops on supplementary topics ranging from Big Data management to privacy and trust in

Cyber Physical Systems. CCGrid, for the first time, also introduced a double-blinded review process for full research papers. We also inaugurated an Artifact Evaluation (AE) track, with 20 papers receiging the Open Research Objects (ORO) or Reusable/Research Objects Reviewed (ROR) badge. The CCGRID and CCGRIDW official proceedings of the conference and workshops are available on IEEE Xplore.

There were several new activities we are introducing this year. One, was an emphasis on Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) led by Beth Plale and Preeti Malakar. The conference adopted a statement to “act with responsibility as its primary consideration, with Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as central goals.” Close attention was also paid to the selection of the organizing committee and the program committee members. A D&I keynote by Dr. Deborah Agarwal and a plenary panel on “Holistically bringing about greater and more lasting forms of inclusion” was also organized. There was also an exclusive mentorship reception for students from under-represented groups in computer science systems research.

A more broader student mentoring program ran through all days of the conference. This included general sessions for all students in research and higher education, focussed sessions for doctoral students and early career researchers, and a special mentoring session by ACM India Council. The conference offered over 40 student travel grants, thanks to the generous support from the ACM India Council and the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The conference this year also promoted the Cloud India Conclave, to help bring the local cloud community to deliberate on the state of the ecosystem through a series of panel discussions.

A special thanks to our sponsors: Meta, AMD, HPE, IBM, Google and Microsoft for their generous funding that helped support various diversity, outreach and student activities, while keeping the registration costs reasonable and ensuring a high quality experience.

Yogesh Simmhan, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

İlkay Altıntaş, University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

An Emphasis on Diversity and Inclusion

CCGrid will act with responsibility as its primary consideration, with Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as central goals. Authors and participants are encouraged to read the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and the ACM Policy Against Harassment, and IEEE Computer Society’s expectation of professional behavior found in the IEEE Computer Society Open Conference Statement, the IEEE Event Conduct and Safety Statement, and the IEEE Code of Ethics.

To advance these goals, we are inaugurating a D&I track at CCGRID 2023 which will feature mentorship and travel support for under-represented groups.