CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshops

The Computer Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) is an action oriented organization dedicated to increasing the number of women participating in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) research and education at all levels.

In addition to increasing the number of women involved, CRA-W also seeks to increase the degree of success women experience and to provide a forum for addressing problems that often fall disproportionately within women’s domain. CRA-W is hopeful that the committee activities will also have a positive impact for other underrepresented groups in CSE and is committed to improving the working environment for Computer Scientists and Engineers of both genders.

The Computing Research Association Committee on Women in Computing (CRA-W) is sponsoring these sessions. The sessions will be held on Wednesday, September 29th from 1:00-4:30pm, with breaks for networking and getting to know one another, and will be followed by a discussion for each track from 4:30-5:00pm.

CRA-W is offering 3 tracks – select a link below. CRA-W is also providing reviews of graduate school applications throughout the conference at the CRA-W booth. Stop by to have your applications reviewed!

Sessions Especially for Undergraduate Students

Wednesday, September 29th from 1:00-4:30 pm – Location: Regency Ballroom VII

What is research?

Presenters:
Nancy M. Amato, Texas A&M University
Dilma Da Silva, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
Katie Wolf, University of Minnesota

Session Description: Research leads to advances that improve the world and how we live and work in it. But, what is research? How does it lead to new and better technologies? Is it simply an “Aha!” experience that some people have, instantly giving us new results, or is there a process involved? What do researchers do and how do they do it? This session introduces you to the exciting world of research and the career paths that you might pursue there.

This session focuses on first and second year undergraduate students. More advanced students are invited to share their experience or to attend the first session of the Graduate Student Workshop.

Bios:

Nancy Amato Nancy M. Amato is a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University where she co-directs the Parasol Lab and serves as chair of the Alliance for Bioinformatics, Computational
Biology, and Systems Biology. She received degrees from Stanford, Berkeley and UIUC. She received an NSF CAREER Award, is an IEEE Fellow, a speaker in the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program and previously for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Lecturer program. She co-directs the CDC/CRA-W DREU program and Distinguished Lecture Series.
Her research interests include motion planning, robotics, computational biology and geometry, and parallel and distributed computing.

Dilma Da Silva is a researcher at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, in New York. She manages the Advanced Operating Systems group. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 1997. Prior to joining IBM, she was an Assistant Professor at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her research in operating systems addresses the need for scalable and customizable system software, and she is currently focusing on cloud computing.

Katie Wolf is a University of Minnesota undergraduate in her last year completing a double major in math and computer science. Her research experience includes participating in the DREU (Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates) summer program in 2009 at Oregon State University where she worked on a project to automate bird species recognition and in 2010 at the University of Southern California doing expressive music performance analysis on collaborative musical performances with delay. She is currently working on her honor’s thesis involving clustering and topic extraction of micro-blogs and applying to graduate schools.

Is research for me?

Presenters:
Abrita Chakravarty, Duke University
Susanna Ricco, Duke University
Susan Rodger, Duke University
Ellen Walker, Hiram College

Session Description: Doing research gives us the opportunity to create new technology that helps all of us. The creativity, innovation, and fast pace of research mean that the life of a researcher will never be boring. Researchers often have ample opportunity to travel, and the ability to structure their work to fit their interests and work style. Sound appealing? But, is it really for you? This session provides a hands-on experience of doing research, so you can get a sense of whether it’s for you. It also provides information on how to extend this experience and do more research as an undergrad to decide if you want to pursue research as a career.

Bios:
Abrita Chakravarty is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Duke University. Her research area is Computational Biology and she is interested in the application of machine learning to solve problems in functional genomics. She is also interested in Computer Science education and especially in leveraging new technologies for teaching. Her classroom teaching experience consists of lecturing, conducting lab sessions, and working as a teaching assistant for introductory computer science courses. As an online instructor for Duke Talent Identification Program’s eStudies course, she has taught high school students Java Programming to design simple computer games.

Susanna Ricco is a 5th-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Duke University, advised by Carlo Tomasi. She works in computer vision and currently is studying long-range motion estimation. She also has worked on medical image analysis and gesture recognition. Susanna holds an MS in Computer Science from Duke and a joint BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College. She got her first taste of research building and programming a scavenger-hunting robot (affectionately named Twitchy) for the 2005 AAAI Mobile Robot Competition while at Harvey Mudd.

Susan Rodger is Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. (1989) in Computer Science from Purdue University and her B.S. (1983) in Computer Science and Mathematics from North Carolina State University. She was previously an Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her research is in visualization, animation, and computer science education. One research project focuses on visualizing and interacting with concepts in formal languages and automata. Her software JFLAP was a finalist candidate in the NEEDS Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware in 2007. Rodger is an ACM Distinguished Educator.

Ellen Walker is Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Hiram College. She received her Sc.B. from Brown University in 1981, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983 and 1989, respectively. She joined Hiram College in 1996, after teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In addition to computer science courses, she teaches a freshman colloquium course and team-teaches courses with colleagues in Biology and Philosophy. Ellen has been active in promoting undergraduate research, and has received National Science Foundation grants for research and curriculum development. She is a member of the ACM-W Council for Women in Computing.

How do I become a researcher?

Presenters:
Cecilia Aragon, University of Washington and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Maria Gini, University of Minnesota
Katherine Panciera, University of Minnesota

Session Description: What’s it like to be in graduate school? What benefits do you get once you have your degree? And what is the road to graduate school? How do you choose the right graduate school for you? Is there anything you can do during college to improve your chances of being admitted? How do you apply? What is the time line for completing the application process? What are the best kinds of recommendations? Does work experience help? How can you fund graduate school? Find out the answers to these and other questions in this session which will tell you all you need to know to apply successfully to graduate school and reap the rewards that come from an advanced degree.

Bios:
Cecilia Aragon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. She is also a computer scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2009, Dr. Aragon was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers.
She earned her Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley, and her B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology. Her research interests include HCI for scientific collaborations and visualization of very large datasets. Dr. Aragon has an interdisciplinary background, including over 15 years of software development experience in industry and at NASA, and a three-year stint as the founder and CEO of a small company.

Maria Gini is a Distinguished Professor of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. She specializes in robotics and artificial intelligence. Specifically she studies how to design autonomous systems that are capable of making intelligent decisions. Such systems range from software agents that decide what to buy and sell to make a profit, to simple robots that disperse in an unknown environment to establish a surveillance network, to autonomous vehicles that search a city to rescue people after a natural disaster. She is a Fellow of AAAI and a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM. She is a member of the CRA-W board co-chairing the Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program.

Katherine Panciera is a Ph.D. student in GroupLens Research at the University of Minnesota planning to graduate in Spring/Summer 2011. Her research is centered around studying the lifecycles of users in online communities. During her graduate career she has been the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship as well as a Department of Education funded GAANN fellowship. Through her fellowships, research, and volunteering, she has worked extensively with university, middle school, and elementary school students on math and computer science education. Katherine completed her undergraduate degrees at Berea College in mathematics and computer science.

The Computing Research Association Committee on Women in Computing (CRA-W) is sponsoring these sessions. The sessions will be held from 1:00-4:30pm, with breaks for networking and getting to know one another, and will be followed by a discussion for each track from 4:30-5:00pm.

Sessions Especially for Graduate Students

Wednesday, September 29th from 1:00-4:30 pm – Location: Hanover CDE

How do I enjoy and succeed in graduate school?

Presenters:
Elizabeth Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology
Erika Shehan Poole, Penn State University
Jane Prey, Microsoft Research

Session Description: This session will address strategies for thriving in graduate school and developing the necessary knowledge, experience and skills for a successful career. Topics include setting realistic goals and expectations, the differences between getting a M.S. and Ph.D. degree, selecting advisors and mentors, setting research goals, working as part of a research team, tracking and maintaining your research and academic progress, and building self confidence. This session will include the importance of carefully choosing advisors and mentors and the differences between the two, how to get the most out of your interactions with your advisor/mentor, responsibilities of both student and advisor/mentor in making the graduate research experience successful, and working through problems with the advisor/mentor relationships.

This session focuses on concerns of first and second year graduate students. More advanced students are invited to share their experience or to attend the first session of the Early Career Workshop.

Bios:
Elizabeth Mynatt is the Director of the GVU Center and Associate Dean in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Mynatt is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of ubiquitous computing, health informatics and assistive technologies. Prior to her position at Georgia Tech she worked at Xerox PARC. She is a member of ACM’s SIGCHI Academy and a Sloan Research Fellow. Her research is supported by multiple grants from the NSF including a five-year NSF CAREER award. Other honorary awards include being named the Top Woman Innovator in Technology by Atlanta Woman magazine in 2005.

Erika Shehan Poole is an assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. Her research focuses on how groups collaborate to use, maintain, and make sense of computing technologies; areas of study have included home technology maintenance practices, public understandings of emerging technologies, workplace adoption of collaboration software, and collaborative gaming technologies for improving health and wellness. Erika holds a BS in computer science from Purdue University, MS in computer science from Georgia Tech, and PhD in human-centered computing from Georgia Tech.

Jane Prey received her BS from the UIUC and her PhD from the UVA. She was a faculty member in the CS Dept at the UVA for 11 years before joining Microsoft Research in Jan, 2004. She is currently responsible for the development and implementation of the Gender Diversity and Pipeline Strategy for Microsoft Research. She also spent 2 years as the CS Program Manager at the National Science Foundation. She is currently a member of the IEEE CS Educational Activities Board, the ACM Education Board, and the CRA Board. She and her husband of 35+ years have 3 adult children – all of whom are in CS/IT. She loves to travel and read cookbooks and murder mysteries.

How do I build my professional network?

Presenters:
Mary Czerwinski, Microsoft Research
Soha Hassoun, Tufts University

Session Description: In this session, you will learn networking skills through role-play and interactive exercises. You will build skills in finding a community, meeting people in the field, and promoting your research and yourself. You will learn how to present your ideas in a concise and appealing way to the people you meet. You will practice making technical and business connections with others, and learn how to leverage them for success in graduate school and your later career.

Bios:
Mary Czerwinski is a Research Area Manager at Microsoft Research, where she manages many diverse areas of human-computer interaction, including social computing, information visualization, CSCW, sensor-based interaction and healthcare. Mary has been an avid participant in the ACM SIGCHI community, sitting on the SIGCHI Executive Committee for the last 10 years, chairing CHI 2008, UIST 2005, Papers Chair for CHI 2000 and UIST 2010, in addition to many other conference volunteer roles. Mary has ~100 publications in HCI and psychology, and holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Mary is very involved in supporting academia as well, sitting on multiple university advisory boards and PhD student dissertation committees.

Soha Hassoun is an associate professor at Tufts University in the Department of Computer Science. She earned a Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, a Master’s degree from MIT, and a BSEE from South Dakota State University. Dr. Hassoun’s research interest is Bio Design Automation and Computer-Aided Design for integrated circuits. Dr. Hassoun is an NSF CAREER award recipient and has served on the technical and executive committees for several conferences and workshops. Hassoun is a Tau Beta Pi Fellow. She is a member of ACM, a senior member of IEEE, and Eta Kappa Nu.

What’s it take to do great research?

Presenters:
Nina Bhatti, HP Labs
Mary Jean Harrold, Georgia Institute of Technology

Session Description: Great research includes not only making a discovery and finding evidence to confirm the discovery, it includes identifying an interesting problem in the first place, promoting the ongoing research, and, in the end, publishing the research results and even moving the results into everyday use. This session provides an overview of all that’s involved in doing great research, and provides tips on how to succeed. You will find out how to do a dissertation and subsequent research with a real WOW factor. This session will also show you that publishing is not as hard as it seems with strategies for publishing your first and subsequent papers.

Bios:
Nina Bhatti is a technologist by training, an innovator by practice. She is currently a Principal Scientist in the HP Lab’s Strategy and Innovation Office where she combines her business skills with her love of innovation. She is focused on new products, new markets, new consumer experiences and the transformation of these technologies into commercial offerings. Previously, she has held positions in engineering and marketing. Nina holds a Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Arizona and has published 40 papers and has 30 patents filed.

Mary Jean Harrold is the ADVANCE Professor of Computing and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. She performs research in analysis and testing of large, evolving software, fault localization and failure identification using statistical analysis, machine learning, and visualization, and monitoring deployed software to improve quality. She received an NSF NYI Award and was named an ACM Fellow. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Computing Research Association (CRA), and served on the editorial board of ACM TOSEM and IEEE TSE, and on the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing (CRA-W). She received the Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.

Sessions Especially for Early Career Researchers

Wednesday, September 29th from 1:00-4:30 pm – Location: Hanover FG

How do I start my own research program?

Presenters:
Andrea Danyluk, Williams College
Lise Getoor, University of Maryland, College Park
Ashley W. Stroupe, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Session Description: Whether you are in academia or a research lab, growing your research program means tapping into resources that help you be more successful. Funding can enable you to attract more students, or work on larger projects. Collaboration enables you to work with people outside your area of expertise, initiate new projects, and have a lot of fun. Networking builds those relationships with people inside and outside your institution that can help you get things done. With representatives from both academia and research labs, this session will cover strategies for identifying the resources that are available to you and how best to take advantage of them.

Bios:
Andrea Danyluk is a professor of Computer Science at Williams College. She received her A.B. from Vassar College in 1984 and her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1992, and was a researcher at NYNEX (now Verizon) before joining the faculty at Williams in 1994. Andrea’s research interests are focused on applications of machine learning. She also has a strong interest in computer science pedagogy. She has published book contributions, journal articles, and conference papers in both areas. Andrea joined the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) in 2008 and co-directs the CREU program.

Lise Getoor is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2001. Her current work includes research on link mining, statistical relational learning and representing uncertainty in structured and semi-structured data. She has published numerous articles in machine learning, data mining, database, and artificial intelligence forums. She was awarded an NSF Career Award,
is an associate editor for the Machine Learning Journal and ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, on the Board of the International Machine Learning Society, a former JAIR associate editor and AAAI Executive council member, and has served on a variety of program committees including AAAI, ICML, IJCAI, KDD, SIGMOD, UAI, VLDB, and WWW.

Ashley W. Stroupe is a senior engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She works as a “Rover Driver” for the Mars Exploration Rover Project (the lead driver for Spirit), building command sequences to drive the rovers and deploy science instruments and developing strategic plans for long-term goals. In addition to her flight work, Dr. Stroupe does research focusing on multi-robot teams in complex environments and behavior-based control, with applications to exploration and mapping, dynamic target observation, and cooperative manipulation. At JPL, she has worked on autonomous construction of structures and autonomous exploration with robot teams. Dr. Stroupe has published multiple conference papers, book chapters, and journal articles in robotics and is an active participant in multiple education and outreach programs. She received a B.S. in physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1990, an M.S. in electrical engineering from George Mason University in 1998, an M.S. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, and a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003. She joined JPL in 2003.

How do I become a leader in my field?

Presenters:
Deb Agarwal, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Carla Gomes, Cornell University
Irene Greif, IBM

Session Description: Technical leadership results in advancement in industry and government labs. It also increases the impact of academic research, and can lead to widespread adoption of research results. What does it take to become a technical leader? What are the rewards of technical leadership? How can you become a thought leader in the industry? What are the benefits of making a technical impact that goes beyond your organization? Panelists from academia, industry and government will share their secrets for becoming technical leaders.

Bios:
Deb Agarwal is Advanced Computing for Science Department Head and the Data Intensive Systems Group Lead at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Agarwal’s projects involve research, development and deployment of technologies to support collaborative scientific research. Her research focus is on development of data server infrastructure to enhance data browsing and analysis capabilities. Her past research interests include cybersecurity for science, secure and reliable group communication protocols, and collaborative tools. Dr. Agarwal holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.

Carla Gomes is an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University, with joint appointments in Computer Science, Information Science, and Applied Economics and Management. Her research has covered several areas in artificial intelligence and computer science, including planning and scheduling, integration of constraint reasoning and operation research techniques for solving combinatorial optimization problems, and randomized algorithms. Gomes is currently pursuing the new research area of Computational Sustainability. Gomes is the the Lead PI of an NSF Expeditions in Computing award on Computational Sustainability and the director of newly established Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University. Gomes is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Irene Greif is Director of IBM’s Center for Social Software in Cambridge, MA. She is founder of the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and has led interdisciplinary research teams to study collaboration and social processes throughout her career. She is a fellow of both the AAAS and ACM. Irene was inducted into the WITI Hall of Fame in 2000 and awarded the Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology Leadership award in 2008. In 2010, Irene was elected to the National
Academy of Engineering. Irene received her S.B. in Mathematics, her S.M. and her PhD. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, all from MIT.

How do I get promoted?

Presenters:
Laura Haas, IBM Almaden Research Center
Ellen W. Zegura, Georgia Institute of Technology

Session Description: Do you know what steps you need to take to prepare for your next promotion? Whether this is preparing a tenure case, climbing the technical ladder, or stepping into a management role, this session will teach you what you can be doing now to prepare yourself for that next big promotion.

Bios:
Laura Haas is an IBM Fellow. She has been Director of Computer Science at IBM’s Almaden Research Center since 2005, and leads research in computer science across IBM’s eight worldwide research labs. She is best known for her work on the Starburst query processor (from which DB2 LUW was developed), on Garlic, a system which allowed integration of heterogeneous data sources, and on Clio, the first semi-automatic tool for heterogeneous schema mapping. She has received several IBM awards for Outstanding Technical Achievement, and an IBM Corporate Award for her work on information integration technology. Dr. Haas was Vice President of the VLDB Board of Trustees from 2004-2009, and 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.

Ellen W. Zegura received the B.S. degree in Computer Science (1987), the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering (1987), the M.S. degree in Computer Science (1990) and the D.Sc. in Computer Science
(1993) all from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Since 1993, she has been on the faculty in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, and she currently chairs the School of Computer Science in the College of Computing. Her research concerns novel paradigms for networked communication, including programmable active networks and disruption tolerant mobile wireless networks. She is the proud mom of two girls, Carmen and Bethany, whose pictures didn’t make it on the web until facebook. Outside of work, she enjoys quilting and Bikram yoga.

A special thanks to our generous sponsor!

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