The conference will take place October 15-18, 2003 at the Atlanta Airport Marriott Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. This year's theme, "Building Diverse Leadership in Computing," reflects a focus on building tomorrow's leaders from diverse researchers in computing while providing knowledge sharing with today's leaders in computing.

Invited speakers include:

• Peter A. Freeman, National Science Foundation
• José L. Muñoz, National Nuclear Security Administration
• Eloy Rodriguez, Cornell University
• Valerie E. Taylor, Texas A&M University
• Warren M. Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Margaret H. Wright, New York University

Panels will focus on mentoring, student experiences in graduate school, and other career-based issues. A poster session will highlight the work of student researchers, with an award for the best poster with a student as the primary author.

The conference honors the significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, a mathematician and professor in computational and applied mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Dr. Tapia, an internationally acclaimed scientist, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the first recipient of the A. Nico Habermann Award from the Computing Research Association 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. Tapia also received the Hispanic Engineer of the Year Award from Hispanic Engineer Magazine in 1996, and was inducted into the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference Hall of Fame in 1997.

The Association for Computing Machinery and the Computing Research Association are sponsoring the event. Opportunities to support the conference are still available by contacting Valerie Taylor, taylor@cs.tamu.edu or Radha Nandkumar radha@ncsa.uiuc.edu

Registration information can be found at the conference website.

The Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing is being planned by the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC), whose mission is to increase the visibility of people of color in computing research and to provide networking opportunities for minority researchers, faculty, and students. CDC is a joint committee of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the Computing Research Association (CRA), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) Computer Society. For more information on CDC, see www.cdc-computing.org.