ACADEMIA

The 2005 Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing was awarded to Dr. Valerie Taylor of Texas A&M University. The award recognizes outstanding achievements in scientific scholarship, a strong civic presence within the scientific community, and a dedication to the attainment of true ethnic diversity in computing and related disciplines. Taylor received her award on Friday, Oct. 21, during the 2005 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conference, held under the theme "A Diversity of Scholars--A Tapestry of Discovery," drew a record registration of almost 350 attendees, about half of whom were students pursuing degrees in computer science, math and engineering. In nominating Taylor, Prof. Juan Gilbert of Auburn University described her as “an aggressive advocate for diversity in computing.” In addition to her many awards and leadership positions, Taylor was cited for her civic contributions, including serving as a volunteer mentor in a housing project in Chicago, where she taught science and mathematics to minority children. “She never stops engaging the underserved as well as the technical community with her civic contributions,” Prof. Gilbert wrote. “We received a number of nominations for this year’s award and are gratified to see a growing number of leaders in the efforts to diversify computing,” said 2005 Tapia conference chair Pamela Williams of Sandia National Laboratories. “While the selection was not an easy one, we felt that Valerie’s many contributions and leadership embody both the spirit of the award and the example set by Richard Tapia.” Since 2002, Taylor has led the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University, where she also holds the Royce E. Wisenbaker Professorship. Her research interests include performance of parallel scientific applications, computer architecture, and visual supercomputing environments. She was awarded a patent for her dissertation work related to computer architecture for scientific computing and in 1993 she received the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award. Her other honors include the Pathbreaker Award from the Women in Leadership at Northwestern University, 2001; Hewlett Packard Harriet B. Rigas Education Award, 2001; Computing Research Association’s A. Nico Habermann Award, 2002; Distinguished Engineering Alumni Society, 2002; Young Outstanding Leader Award from the University of California, Berkeley; and MOBE Influencers and Innovators of the Internet and Technology Award, 2003. An active member of the scientific community, Taylor chairs the Coalition to Diversify Computing; served as the general co-chair of the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in 2001; and was the general chair of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference in 2002. The Tapia conference honors the contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia of Rice University to the growth of diversity in computing and related disciplines and is co-sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, in cooperation with the Computing Research Association. The 2005 Tapia conference, of which Taylor also served as co-chair for fundraising, enjoys the financial support of almost 30 academic, research, and business organizations at several levels: o Platinum Supporter: the National Science Foundation (NSF). o Gold Supporter: the Rice-Houston Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Program. o Silver Supporters: Calit2 (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology); the Engaging People In Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC) collaboration; Google; IBM Research; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Microsoft; the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Sandia National Laboratories; the Computer Science Department at Texas A&M University; the University of California, Berkeley; the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and Henry Samueli School of Engineering, University of California Irvine; and the Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. o Bronze Supporters: Auburn University; Department of Computer Science at Duke University; Hewlett-Packard; Indiana University; Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. o Contributors: the College of Engineering at the University of North Texas; the Computer Science Department and the College of Science at Purdue University; Information Technology at Purdue University; Rochester Institute of Technology; the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the Ohio Supercomputer Center; the University of California, San Diego; and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Also at the 2005 conference, Dr. Mark Friedman was announced as the conference chair for Tapia 2007. The dates and location are still under consideration. For more information about the Tapia conference series, go to its Web site.