Numenta Technology Discussion

Location: Narcissus and Orange Blossom

Presenter: Dileep George

Founder and Principal Architect Dileep George will provide a technical talk related to Donna Dubinsky’s keynote address on the technology behind Numenta’s Platform for Intelligent Computing (NuPIC). NuPIC implements a hierarchical temporal memory system (HTM) patterned after the human neocortex. It is expected that NuPIC will be used on problems that, generally speaking, involve identifying patterns in complex data. The ultimate applications likely will include vision systems, robotics, data mining and analysis, and failure analysis and prediction.

Girl Geeks in High School – Technical Experiences of Future Inventors

Location: Salon I and II

Presenters: Katy Dickinson (Sun Microsystems), Jessica Dickinson Goodman (Carnegie Mellon University, Alice Adelman (Castilleja School), Melissa Wong (Castilleja School), Jennifer Alice Simonovich (Menlo School)

This panel provides direct communication from Silicon Valley girls about their recent computing, technical, and robotics experiences: what worked (or did not work) in terms of teaching, course content, approach, coaching, and resources. How does growing up in a world-class center of technical innovation effect young women in particular? Panelists would be from private and public high schools, girls-only and co-educational schools. Some will have just started their Freshman college year.

Real Teamwork in the Virtual World

Location: Salon VI and VII

Presenters: BJ Wishinsky (Cadence Design Systems), Lynn M. Koch (IBM Corporation), Eileen Sullivan (Cadence Design Systems), Sylvia Lam (IBM Corporation)

This panel will focus on industry women who participate in “virtual teams” – distributed geographically and perhaps organizationally – where the primary means of communication are technology-assisted rather than face-to-face. The objectives of this panel are to share the experience and best practices of women successful in working with dispersed teams, and to share audience challenges and solutions for effective communication and teamwork in a virtual working environment.

Transactional memory: Taming concurrent programming in the coming era of many-core computing.

Location: Camellia and Dogwood

Presenter: Tatiana Shpeisman (Intel)

The era of ever-increasing processor speed solving all problems in the computing world is ending. Future performance improvements will have to come from parallel or concurrent programs running on processors with multiple cores. Transactional memory promises to ease multi-threaded programming by providing simpler concurrency control mechanism. This talk will contrast transactional programming with lock-based synchronization, give an overview of transactional memory semantics and implementation, and discuss remaining open problems.

Inventing the Future Through the Art of Mentorship: Insights Into the Mentor/Mentee Relationship

Location: South Ballroom

Presenters: Jakita Thomas (IBM), Kelly Malone (IBM), Mave Houston (PriceWaterhouseCoopers), Sandra K. Johnson (IBM), Janet L. Kolodner (Georgia Institute
of Technology), Andrea Lawrence (Spelman College)

Fewer women pursue degrees in science and engineering are compared to males in the same areas. Our panel will help women students identify and cultivate a support system of more knowledgeable people who can help them navigate the process, address the emotional and mental obstacles and difficulties involved, and serve as examples to learn lessons that can be adapted and applied to make the journey a smoother one.

Traditional and Creative Funding Models for Outreach Programs

Location: Salon VIII

Presenters: Bettina Bair (Ohio State University), Jan Cuny (University of Oregon), Jane Daniels (Henry Luce Foundation), Jane Prey (Microsoft Research), Carla Romero
(Computing Research Association)

Sustainability is a significant challenge for most outreach programs. Panelists will present overviews of traditional sources of funding, government agencies like the National Science Foundation, large industry foundations as represented by Microsoft, and other organizations such as the Computing Research Association, CRA and the Henry Luce Foundation – that may provide more targeted grants. We will also present a few creative strategies that have proven useful on an even smaller scale.

ACM Student Research Competition (SRC)

Location: Salon III

Presenters: The semi-finalists from the Poster Competition Wednesday evening

Individual students have been selected to participate in the ACM Student Research Competition (sponsored by Microsoft Research). There are two parts to this competition. The first round of the competition evaluates the student’s research during the opening reception and poster presentation. Those students who are selected by the judges to advance to the second round will continue in the competition by giving a formal, short, conference presentation of their research during this session.

Students’ research will be evaluated on the quality and significance of the work, and the quality and clarity of both an oral and visual presentation.

The winners from the second round of the competition will be announced at the Grace Hopper Awards Banquet, and will continue on to ACM’s Grand Finals.