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Inspiring Women in Computing

Berkeley Lab Volunteers Energize Grace Hopper Conference

October 21, 2014

Left to right: Dani Ushizima (CRD), Michelle Phung (NERSC), Wilma Snider (NERSC), Tony Baylis (LLNL), Elizabeth Bautista (NERSC), Sowmya Balasubramanian (ESnet), Ann Quach (LLNL), Mary Hester (ESnet), and Sylvia Kuijpers (SURFnet).

Women from Berkeley Lab's Computing Sciences area delivered talks, volunteered as mentors and helped organize and energize this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The annual conference, billed as the "world's largest gathering of women technologists," was held October 8 - 10 in Phoenix, Ariz. and attracted 8,000 attendees, a third of them students.

Elizabeth Bautista, of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), led the lab's diversity efforts, as well as several efforts for Filipinas in Computing. Bautista also presented a talk entitled "Building Your Professional Network" and served on the panel "Reach for African and Asian Systers and Women in Computing Everywhere." Deb Agarwal, of the Computational Research Division (CRD), participated in two panels, "Managing Up" and "Latest Trends and Technical Challenges of Big Data Analytics," and co-chaired the LGBT committee. Dani Ushizima, also of CRD, served on the poster committee, judged student posters, mentored graduate and undergraduate students and participated in the Senior Women in Computing program. Sowmya Balasubramanian and Mary Hester of the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) also mentored during the Student Opportunities Lab session. NERSC interns Wilma Snider and Michelle Phung led two table top discussions: "Encouraging Filipinas to enter Computing Fields" and "Support for the Challenges of Computing Science Studies." Finally, all Berkeley Lab attendees helped recruit during the career fair.

Sponsored by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Association for Computing Machinery and founded in 1994, the conference showcases the achievements of women in computing and seeks to encourage and support young women entering computing, a field traditionally dominated by men.


About Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab

High performance computing plays a critical role in scientific discovery. Researchers increasingly rely on advances in computer science, mathematics, computational science, data science, and large-scale computing and networking to increase our understanding of ourselves, our planet, and our universe. Berkeley Lab’s Computing Sciences Area researches, develops, and deploys new foundations, tools, and technologies to meet these needs and to advance research across a broad range of scientific disciplines.