FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 21, 2003 CONTACT: Portia Eley, Boston's Community Medical Group, Pme89@hotmail.com

DEADLINE NEARS FOR 2003 TAPIA DIVERSITY IN COMPUTING AWARD Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing 2003 Conference (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/Tapia2003/)

Nominations are being sought for the Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing. This award recognizes an individual with outstanding achievements in scientific scholarship, a strong civic presence within the scientific community, and a dedication to the attainment of true ethnic diversity in computing and related disciplines. The ideal recipient will be devoted to the principle of equity in both theory and practice, and will have demonstrated leadership in applying creative solutions to the difficult social, cultural, technical and political problems of diversifying computing.

The award will be given at the 2003 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference, which will take place October 15-18, 2003 in Atlanta, Georgia. The Tapia conference is a bi-annual event that provides a unique forum at which researchers and students can come together to share technical advances while honoring and celebrating diversity.

Nominating letters for the Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing should include the following information:

• Nominee's name
• Nominee's affiliation
• A summary of the nominee's scientific contributions (300 words)
• A summary of the nominee's civic contributions (300 words)
• A summary of the nominee's leadership in diversifying computing (300 words), and
• Nominator's name, affiliation, email address, and phone number.

The deadline for nominations is August 15, 2003. Nominations should be emailed to Bryant York, Portland State University (york@cs.pdx.edu). A pdf file as an email attachment is preferred.

Researchers and students in computing and computational science are encouraged to participate in this year's conference. The conference early registration deadline is September 12, 2003.

The conference honors the contributions of Richard A. Tapia of Rice University to the growth of diversity in computing and related disciplines. Tapia, an internationally acclaimed scientist, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the first recipient of the Computing Research Association's A. Nico Habermann Award for outstanding contributions to aiding members of underrepresented groups within the computing community, a member of the National Science Board, and recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring from President Clinton.

The Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing 2003 conference is being planned by the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) - http://www.cdc-computing.org -- whose mission is to increase the visibility of people of color in computing research. CDC is a joint organization of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Computing Research Association (CRA), and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS). Tapia 2003 is sponsored by the ACM and CRA in cooperation with IEEE-CS. It is supported by Silver Supporters ACM, AGEP Program at Rice University, Microsoft, Inc., National Center for Supercomputing Applications, National Computational Science Alliance, and HPCwire, Gridtoday, and DSstar; Bronze Supporters AAAI, Argonne National Laboratory - Mathematics and Computer Science Division, EOT-PACI, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; and Contributors Portland State University and Ohio Supercomputing Center.