2010 Award Winners

The award winners will be honored for their accomplishments and contributions to women in technology at an Awards Ceremony on September 30, 2010, and will talk about their work on Friday – October 1, 2010 during the 10th Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) in Atlanta, Georgia. For more details, see the conference program schedule.

Award Winners


2010 Anita Borg Social Impact Award – Underwritten By Microsoft

The Anita Borg Social Impact Award honors an individual or team that has caused technology to have a positive impact on the lives of women and society or has caused women to have a significant impact on the design and use of technology.

Ann Quiroz Gates ANN QUIROZ GATES

The 2010 award winner is Dr. Ann Quiroz Gates. Ann is the Associate Vice President of Research and Sponsored Projects at the University of Texas at El Paso and past chair of the Computer Science Department. Her research areas are software property elicitation and specification, and workflow-driven ontologies.

Dr. Gates directs the NSF-funded Cyber-ShARE Center that focuses on developing and sharing resources through cyber-infrastructure to advance research and education in science. She was a founding member of the NSF Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure, and she served on the Board of Governors of IEEE-Computer Society 2004-2009. Gates leads the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI), an NSF-funded consortium that is focused on the recruitment, retention, and advancement of Hispanics in computing and is a founding member of the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT), a national network to advance participation of women in IT.

Dr. Gates received the 2009 Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing and was named to Hispanic Business magazine’s 100 Influential Hispanics in 2006 for her work on the Affinity Research Group model that focuses on development of undergraduate students involved in research. She received her Ph.D. from New Mexico State University in 1994.


2010 Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award – Underwritten by Cisco

The Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award is given to a woman who has inspired the women’s technology community through outstanding technological and social contributions.

Laura Haas LAURA HAAS

This year’s winner, Dr. Laura Haas, is an IBM Fellow and has been director of computer science at IBM Almaden Research Center since 2005, and leads research in computer science across IBM’s worldwide research labs. Previously, Dr. Haas was responsible for Information Integration Solutions (IIS) architecture in IBM’s Software Group after leading the IIS development team through its first two years. She joined the development team in 2001 as manager of DB2 UDB Query Compiler development.

Before that, Dr. Haas was a research staff member and manager at the Almaden lab for nearly twenty years. In IBM Research, she worked on and managed a number of exploratory projects in distributed database systems. Dr. Haas is best known for her work on the Starburst query processor (from which DB2 UDB was developed); on Garlic, a system which allowed federation of heterogeneous data sources; and on Clio, the first semi-automatic tool for heterogeneous schema mapping. Garlic technology, married with DB2 UDB query processing, is the basis for the IBM WebSphere Information Server’s federation capabilities, while Clio capabilities are a core differentiator in IBM’s Rational Data Architect.

Dr. Haas is an active member of the database community and currently serves as Vice President of the VLDB Board of Trustees as well as on many program committees for technical conferences. She was vice chair of ACM SIGMOD from 1989-1997. Dr. Haas has received several IBM awards for Outstanding Technical Achievement, and an IBM Corporate Award for her work on federated database technology. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the IBM Academy of Technology, an ACM Fellow, and Vice Chair of the board of the Computing Research Association. Dr. Haas received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, and her bachelor degree from Harvard University.


2010 Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award – Underwritten by Microsoft

The Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award is given each year to a junior non-tenured faculty member under the age of 40 at an academic or research institution pursuing high-quality research in any field of engineering or physical sciences while contributing significantly to promoting diversity in his/her environment.

Beth Pruitt BETH PRUITT

The 2010 Denice Denton Award winner is Dr. Beth Pruitt. Beth did her BS at MIT and MS and PhD at Stanford. She worked on Piezoresistive Cantilevers For Characterizing Thin-Film Gold Electrical Contacts during her PhD. During her post-doc, Dr. Pruitt worked on nanostencils and polymer MEMS. She joined the Stanford Mechanical Engineering faculty in Fall 2003 and started the Stanford Microsystems Lab.

Dr. Pruitt’s research projects include the development of novel processes and micromachined sensors and actuators for measuring micro-mechanical behavior, the analysis, design, and control of integrated electro-mechanical systems., and biomedical applications of nanofabricated devices with the goal of developing integrated MEMS-biological test platforms, precise measurement and analysis systems, and reliable manufacture methods. Her research addresses instrumentation and interfaces between the micro and macro scale, understanding the scaling properties of physical and material processes, and reproducing and propagating new technologies efficiently and robustly.

Dr. Pruitt has received an NSF CAREER award, and DARPA YFA award. Current lab support is comprised of NSF, NIH, DARPA, CIRM and Stanford Bio-X grants. Prior to her Ph.D., Dr. Pruitt was an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving first at NAVSEA08, the engineering headquarters of the Navy nuclear program, then as a Systems Engineering instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she also taught offshore sailing.


2010 Change Agent Awards – Underwritten by Google

The Anita Borg Change Agent Awards celebrate the accomplishments of technical women from developing countries who are working in their community to attract and support women in technology. This year’s winners are Ana Regina Cavalcanti da Rocha from Brazil, Gayatri Buragohain from India and Tayana Etienne from Haiti.

Gayatri Buragohain GAYATRI BURAGOHAIN from India

Gayatri Buragohain, is the founder of Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT), a pioneering organization that empowers women using technology. FAT’s programs include a Tech Education Center for teenage girls in a New Delhi slum to explore technology and social issues using the internet and multimedia, workshops for all levels of women, and WeWIT, an online campaign that showcases female techie success stories and is working towards connecting female computing students with mentors and showcases female techie success stories. FAT also collaborates with women’s rights organizations to incorporate technology in their work.

In May 2009, Gayatri co-founded Joint Leap Technologies (JLT), a for-profit web development company. JLT works closely with FAT to provide quality web technology advice and consulting to nonprofits and also is the primary donor for FAT.

Gayatri is the ACM-W India Ambassador as well as a frequent public speaker. She has traveled throughout India leading gender sensitization trainings, hands-on tech trainings, and workshops on gender inequalities within technology and how to help women excel and become leaders in using technology. She was awarded the Anita Borg Institute’s “Systers Pass it On” Award in Spring 2008 and Spring 2010.

Gayatri graduated with a degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Gauhati University in Assam in 2003.



Ana Regina Cavalcanti da Rocha ANA REGINA CAVALCANTI DA ROCHA from Brazil

Dr. Ana Regina Cavalcanti da Rocha, is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Graduate School of Engineering, Computer Science Department and Technical Coordinator of the Brazilian Reference Model for Software Process Improvement. For decades, Ana has been a change agent for Brazilian women in software engineering. Since the 1980s, she has given software engineering unprecedented visibility in Brazil and beyond, created a software quality culture, initiated a vast series of workshops and programs to assess and enhance software quality, and tailored successful software engineering practices for adoption by Brazilian businesses small and large. In doing so, she has also addressed two essential problems: lack of educational and professional opportunities for women, and daunting levels of Brazilian poverty. Her scores of women students have subsequently achieved industrial and academic success. And by offering opportunities to those who would not otherwise have them, she has inspired dozens of start-up companies and programs throughout Brazil.

Dr. Cavalcanti da Rocha has devoted her career to providing opportunities to students, especially women, and particularly from the rural areas of Brazil who have little access to education and technology. She has empowered these women to return home after their studies, to provide similar opportunities to their own students and colleagues.

Through her efforts Brazil’s software and software engineering have credibility throughout the world and her software engineering innovations are applied in places that most need them. For instance, a cardiology institute for the poor in Salvador has worked with her students to design and develop Expert System in Cardiology enabling physicians in rural areas to diagnose myocardial infarctions. Her network of women computer scientists is growing at an accelerated pace, now that her former students are themselves in senior positions, encouraging the next generation of women to carry on her tradition of education and excellence.

Dr. Cavalcanti da Rocha has a Bachelor of Mathematics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Masters and PhD in Computer Science from Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She coordinated projects for the Brazilian Navy, Brazilian Air Force, the Electoral Brazilian Tribunal, Brazilian Petroleum Company, and Brazilian National Bank for Development and others. She has been the advisor of 22 Doctor of Science Thesis, among which 11 were women. She was also the advisor of 90 Master Thesis, among which 39 were women. She has published 7 books, 4 book chapters, 18 papers in Journals and almost 300 papers in International and Brazilian conferences.



Tayana Etienne TAYANA ETIENNE from Haiti

Tayana Etienne is a full-time professor in the Science Department of the State University of Haiti and is the director of the MBDS Master in Haiti that is offered in a joint effort with the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis where she received her Master’s Degree. She teaches Computer Science and conducts applied research projects centered on information and communication technology (ICT) use in rural areas, mobile technologies, wireless infrastructure, communicating objects, RFID for education, health and tourism.

As a Haitian pioneer in ICT, Tayana was the first Haitian woman to obtain a scholarship for her Master degree in Computer Science from the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis (UNSA), France, after her BS in Electronic Engineering in Haiti. Tayana has been instrumental in making this degree available in Haiti in order to provide the same opportunity to many girls locally.

In 2001, she co-founded SOLUTIONS S.A. an IT consulting Company in Haiti which has grown to be one of the most innovative software development firms in the country and was nominated in 2005 for the Star Quality Award by the “Business Initiative Directions” in Geneva and in 2009 for the Pioneers of Prosperity Award for Haiti and the Caribbean organized by the OTF Group.

After the January 12th, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, she launched with her team the most important local ICT initiative as a contribution effort. This project includes a web database for NGO collaboration and the first call center dedicated to disaster relief in Haiti. She participates in several committees to improve the extension and exploitation of ICT for development in Haiti. Tayana is passionately involved in various projects in rural communities impacting girls and women.