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Grace Hopper Conference 2007 |
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 Twelve women from Virginia Tech attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, which was held from October 17th to 20th in Orlando, FL. The conference was designed "to showcase and model the success of technical women, to develop the next generation of technical leaders and to influence and change the culture of technology," said Telle Whitney, President of the Anita Borg Institute.
Two students were selected to present during the events. Amrita Pati presented a technical poster on Genomic Signatures From DNA Word Graphs and Laurian Vega presented at the session 20 Years of Empowering Women in Computing: Systers Past, Present, and Future. Other students attending were Stacy Branham, Meg Kurdziolek, Tejinder Judge, Sarah Peck, Mara Silva, Lauren Smith, Jessica Whitley, Linda Carter, Priyanka Mohan, and Megan Beavers.
All of the students were greatly impacted by the conference. When asked to describe the best thing that was received from it the word that was used the most was "empowering". Megan Beavers said, "I cannot think of another way that I would get to discuss MBA paths with an executive from Cisco, social issues with a woman on Oprah, and dance with the 2006 Turing Award Winner."
The students would like to thank the sponsors for their generosity, which allowed them to attend this important conference. "The Grace Hopper Conference helps us become more solidly entrenched in computing and helps us believe that we can in fact make a difference," said Laurian Vega.Next year’s Grace Hopper conference will be held in Colorado, and hopefully the attendance will be even greater! |
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