BIG DATA

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced today Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development, Google, and General Manager, Google.org and Fran Berman, Professor in the UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the first holder of the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD will be keynote speakers for the 9^th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), which will be held September 30-October 3 at the J.W. Marriott Starr Pass Resort in Tucson Arizona.

The second annual Plenary Panel of Technology Executives will include Linda Brisnehan, Vice President Military Support Programs, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Nora Denzel, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Payroll, Intuit Corporation, and Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer of Amazon.com.

The world’s largest gathering of women in computing in industry, academia, and government, GHC is a four-day technical conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Leading researchers and industry experts discuss their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today’s technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research, and engineering. Co-presented by the Anita Borg Institute and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the conference features more than 100 sessions over 8 tracks as well as invited technical speakers, panels, workshops, robotics workshop, new investigator technical papers, Ph.D. forums, technical posters, “birds of a feather” sessions, the ACM Student Research Competition, and an awards celebration. The theme of this year’s conference is “Creating Technology for Social Good”.

The 2008 GHC attracted over 1,450 participants from 23 countries and featured more than 300 presenters. GHC provides technical women with visibility, a sense of community, and critical social networks and mentoring relationships that improve female representation in the field. A survey of last year’s participants revealed that a significant percentage reported an increased passion and commitment to their roles as technical women after attending the conference. The survey also found that attendance had a positive impact on their professional advancement.