Dr. Joan M. Francioni, Panels Committee Chair
Winona State University, joanf@wind.winona.msus.edu

Thursday, October 16, 2003

- High Performance Computing

- Diversifying the Computing Pipeline

- Defining and Sustaining Quality Mentoring

- Advice to Early Career Professionals from the Trenches

Friday, October 17, 2003

- Where are all the Leaders? Closing the Leadership Gap

- Politically Incorrect, Fast Pitch, Hardball Or Asking the Hard Questions about Diversity in Computing: An Inquisition of Richard Tapia

- Navigating the Tenure Process: A Diverse Prospective

- Grant Proposal Development Tips from the Experts (Presentations Available (posted 12/7/03))

Saturday, October 18, 2003

- The Hows and Whys of Graduate School: A Graduate Education

- Equal Opportunity Disenfranchisement: Who Gets to Count Your Vote?

It is well known that African-Americans, Hispanics, Native American and other racial minorities are inadequately represented in both academic and professional computing. What are the reasons behind such dismal numbers? How do we increase the number of underrepresented minorities in undergraduate and graduate programs in addition to supporting those already in the pipeline? A full understanding of the experiences that limit the participation of racial minorities in computing must be addressed. Only then will the computing sciences benefit from an increased participation from these groups.

This panel will address the above questions and other issues facing minorities in the computing sciences. We will present strategies that encourage more underrepresented minorities to study computing. Moreover, strategies to retain minority students currently in undergraduate and graduate programs will also be discussed.

The goal of the panel "Navigating the Tenure Process: A Diverse Prospective" is to highlight the requirements for successfully navigating the tenure process from diverse perspectives, with a special focus on minorities. At this time, we are starting to see an increase in the number of minority doctoral graduates entering academia. This is motivated by the current economic climate of a decrease in research positions at major companies and the increase of intellectual freedom in the academic environment. It is critical that minorities who have successfully navigated the tenure and promotion process to the level of full professor make known the strategies used to achieve a positive outcome.

Over the past several years, Dr. Tapia has given a large number of presentations in various fora on a variety of topics related to diversity in computing. Some of these presentations have been followed by a question-and-answer session during which members of the audience have been allowed to directly question Dr. Tapia on points that he has made during the talk. Subsequent to some of these talks some have heard the following characterizations voiced (depending on the makeup of the audience):

1. Few questions were asked because Dr. Tapia is "preaching to the choir" - i.e. people who already believe strongly in his point of view, or the questions that were asked were of such a nature as to simply allow Dr. Tapia to further elaborate his view (slow pitch, softball).
2. Few questions were asked because some potential questioners felt intimidated - not by Dr. Tapia, but by fear of public opinion. They were afraid that by asking a tough question they would be branded as "insensitive" or "racist" (political correctness).

Prior to joining the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at Portland State University, Dr. York has been a professor of computer science at Northeastern University.

Dr. York has received multiple awards for his scholarly and civic service. He was honored by the Computing Research Association (CRA) with the A. Nico Habermann Award in 1998. More recently he was the first recipient of the Richard A. Tapia Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science and Diversifying Science.

Dr. Tapia is the honoree of this conference. His extended biography is listed on the conference main page under "About Richard Tapia"

The topic is the crucial concept and practice of varied forms of mentoring, from undergraduate research, to graduate research, and beyond the University. Speakers encompass both experienced faculty from the university, an industry researcher, and senior graduate student in Computer Science. The difference between mentoring and supervision will be explored. We will examine the mentoring needs of undergraduate researchers, using our NSF REU SUPERB as a model. At the undergraduate level, we will analyze the components of successful undergraduate research mentoring as a conduit to graduate school. At the graduate level, Panelists will address the mentoring needs of graduate students, sensitivity to issues faced by underrepresented students in majority universities, challenges in finding a good mentor, defining a good research problem, determining the level of guidance, and mentoring for the job search, and sustaining mentoring relationships beyond the university. Panelists will discuss the critical role of peer mentoring provided through active minority student organizations, using Berkeley's BGESS (Black Graduate Engineering and Science Students Association) as a model. An interactive session is anticipated with feedback and questions from those attending.

Sheila Humphreys brings 20 years of experience in fostering science intervention and diversity programs at the pre-college, undergraduate and graduate levels to promote diversity. Humphreys received the A. Nico Habermann Award from the Computer Research Association in 1999, for contributions on behalf of minority groups in computer science. She is knowledgeable about issues of access to information technology, computer science and engineering and was an invited member of the Computer Research Association Working Group that produced the report "Recruitment and Retention of Underrepresented Minority Graduate Students in Computer Science," (CRA, August 2000). She is an active member of the Berkeley Coalition for Excellence in Mathematics, Science, and Engineering. She has initiated many intervention programs at Berkeley to increase the participation of under-represented students in engineering and computer science, including the computer science Reentry Program. As director of the EECS Center for Undergraduate Matters, she oversees academic and pre-professional support and programs for undergraduate students. Humphreys has been active in equity issues nationally and has strong ties to national organizations.

John Davis received a Ph.D. from The University of California, Berkeley. His research interests lie in the field of wireless communications at the systems level. To date, he has been involved with work at the physical level, datalink level and network level.

At the physical level, he did both indoor and outdoor propagation measurements. Indoor measurements were taken within Cory Hall (U.C. Berkeley) at 2.4 GHz while outdoor measurements involved the PATH Intelligent Vehicle Highway Project and considered propagation at 900 MHz between vehicles in single file. Both the indoor and outdoor measurements used a network analyzer and disc-cone antennas (omnidirectional) to measure the frequency response of a stationary environment with a given separation distance between the receive and transmit antennas. In both of the measurements above, time delay spread, path loss rate, and Rician K factor were measured.

John Davis worked on network software configuration while interning at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. The job involved configuring IBM RF wireless PCMCIA adapter cards to run TCP/IP over a wireless link. The adapter cards allowed a wireless LAN to be set up with portable computer (most notably, IBM's ThinkPad) and the TCP/IP configuration allowed the wireless LAN to connect to the Internet. The adapter cards adhered to a slow frequency hopping protocol.

Most recently, he has been working on datalink protocols for the InfoPad project. Specifically he has studying the Virtual Cell concept and Space Time Reservation Multiple Access (STRMA) with intent to implement these schemes as the uplink of the InfoPad system. STRMA and Virtual Cells provide an elegant approach to dynamic channel allocation using decentralized control.

Dr. Gary S. May received the B.E.E. degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1985. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California,t Berkeley in 1987 and 1991 respectively. While at Berkeley, he was named a National Science Foundation and an AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow. His thesis research at Berkeley focused on developing a methodology for the automated malfunction diagnosis of semiconductor fabrication equipment. He has held engineering positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories and at McDonnell-Douglas Corp. He was a National Science Foundation "National Young Investigator," Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing, and is currently Chair of the National Advisory Board of the National Society of Black Engineers.

Professor May's research interests include semiconductor process and equipment diagnosis, process control, process simulation, yield analysis and enhancement, and equipment/process modeling. Other areas of interest include semiconductor device physics, statistics, artificial intelligence, and expert systems.

Dr. May also coordinates a summer undergraduate research program for minority students called SURE (formerly known as GT-SUPREEM). This program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is intended to expose them to engineering research in the hopes that they will one day seek admission into the graduate program at Georgia Tech.

Greg is a graduate student in the computer science program at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include reinforcement learning and its application to motor control problems. He received a B.S. in electrial engineering and computer sciences from Berkeley in 1998. His advisor is Professor Stuart Russell.

Hakim Weatherspoon is graduate student in the computer science PhD program. His projects include archival storage for high availability and disaster recovery, wireless sensor network regime and introspective replica management. His advisor is Professor Kubiatowicz. He has also completed some research for his previous advisor Anthony Joseph.

In graduate school, the rules for advancement were usually well documented. You took the required classes, passed qualifying exams, found a research topic and advisor, proposed your thesis topic, engaged in research at the frontiers of science, defended your world-changing ideas, and were deemed Ph.D. worthy.

As professionals beginning careers in academia, industry or a national laboratory, we find ourselves wading through systems with numerous unwritten rules, mechanisms for promotion, and social as well as professional networks. Which meetings are required and which are highly encouraged? Is asking for a mentor a sign of maturity or weakness? Will giving my employer exposure through outreach involvement benefit me or diminish my professional credibility? How do I achieve balance in my family and work life? How do I know I am making the right career decisions?

Because oftentimes the questions we ask and the decisions we face are similar, three experienced panelists, from academia, industry, and a national laboratory, will discuss the most important issues faced by young professionals in their arena, interwoven with advice on handling those issues. These panelists will give advice from the trenches -they've lived it, experienced it, and overcome it.

Dr. Illya Hicks was born and raised in Waco TX. He received a B.S. in Mathematics from Southwest Texas State University. He received his PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics with a concentration in Operations Research from Rice University. He was also a recipient of the AT&T Labs Fellowship. Dr. Hicks is currently an Assistant Professor in Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University, where he conducts research in combinatorial optimization, integer programming and graph theory.

Prior to joining the faculty in 1990, Armando Rodriguez worked at MIT, IBM, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and Raytheon Missile Systems. He has also worked at Elgin Air Force Base and Boeing Defense and Space Systems. He has published more than 100 technical papers in refereed journals and at conferences. Dr. Rodriguez has given over 35 invited presentations at international and national forums, conferences, and corporations. He currently serves as an associate editor on the IEEE Control Systems Society Conference Editorial Board.

This panel will provide a glimpse of high performance computing (HPC) environment and applications that are made possible by decades of research, development, deployment and investment in the national computational hardware and software infrastructure. Three panelists, luminaries in the world of high performance computing, will highlight current accomplishments, advances in science and engineering that it has enabled, the opportunities and challenges in using HPC to understand and solve large scale problems, efforts in education and outreach, and some of the lessons learned, especially in broadening participation.

Radha Nandkumar obtained her Ph. D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. Her research interests in the areas of condensed matter physics, extrapolated to astrophysical systems, have extended to observational astronomy, theoretical modeling and computational science. She joined the staff of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois in 1985 and has been with the Center since its inception. She has held various responsibilities at NCSA for enabling computational science research and has an in-depth knowledge of current trends in technology and advances in computational science. She has participated in NCSA's strategic planning, management, customer relationships, peer review processes and resource allocations. Most recently she also completed an Executive M.B.A. at the University of Illinois and is in charge of NCSA's Campus Faculty Relations and International Affiliations Program. She is a speaker and a panelist and has made numerous invited presentations globally in the area of high performance computing and computational science. She serves on several committees that promote diversity, women in computing and information technology, and computational science. Her current research interests are related to grid computing.

Dan Reed holds the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professorship at the University of Illinois, where he serves as director of the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). In this dual directorship role, Reed provides strategic direction and leadership to the roughly fifty Alliance partners and NCSA and is the principal investigator for the Alliance cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. He is also one of two principal investigators and the Chief Architect for the NSF TeraGrid project to create a U.S. national infrastructure for Grid computing. The TeraGrid is a multiyear effort to build and deploy the world's largest, fastest, distributed computing infrastructure for open scientific research.

Dr. Reed is a member of several national collaborations, including the NSF Center for Grid Application Development Software, the Department of Energy (DOE) Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing program, and the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute. He is chair of the NERSC Policy Board for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is co-chair of the Grid Physics Network Advisory Committee and is a member of the board of directors of the Computing Research Association. He is an incoming member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). Before becoming NCSA director, Reed was head of the University of Illinois computer science department from 1996 to 2001.

Dr. Osni Marques is a member of the Scientific Computing Group of the High Performance Computing Research Department, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Currently, he is the PI for the project Advanced CompuTational Software (ACTS) Collection, funded by the Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences (MICS) Division of the US Department of Energy (DOE). The ACTS Collection (http://acts.nersc.gov) comprises a set of software tools developed mostly at DOE Laboratories and universities, and that can simplify the solution of common and important computational problems. Osni's research interests include the study, implementation and testing of algorithms for the solution of problems in numerical linear algebra, in particular eigenvalue problems, and high-end scientific computing. He has worked in applications related to protein motions, acoustics problems in automobile design, structural analyses, geophysics, and more recently in material sciences calculations. Osni also holds a research position at the UC Berkeley Computer Sciences Dept., where he works in the framework of the LAPACK, ScaLAPACK and NSF NPACI projects.

Dr. Roscoe Giles is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the College of Engineering, Boston University. He does computational science research, education, and outreach. His research in computational science focuses on applications of parallel supercomputers to physics and materials problems. He is a team leader for the Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (EOT-PACI), and Deputy Director of the Boston University Center for Computational Science. He is the Executive Director of the new Institute for African-American eCulture (iAAEC) and was General Chair of the SC2002 Conference.

Increasing the numbers of students from underrepresented minority populations attending graduate school will help to build a more diversified scientific workforce. Information about opportunities and processes involving graduate school can help these students make informed choices. The panel will address several topics, providing an overview of MS and Ph. D. programs, the logistics of the admissions process, and a discussion of graduate school life. The panel will include presentations from faculty members from a variety of institutions and underrepresented minority students who are currently enrolled in graduate programs.

Why is a particular grant proposal funded? Is it the exceptional content? Is it the dazzling presentation? Or is it based on who are your friends or ... enemies? Is it the people, place or thing - or one too many nouns?

Three panelists from DOE, NASA, and NSF will present the "Dos" and "Don'ts" of developing and writing grant proposals based on their experience as program managers. In addition, each panelist will provide a Top Ten list of the characteristics of outstanding proposals. What separates the top scores from the rest of the group? Come out and improve your chances of developing a successful grant proposal.

Dr. Villalobos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at The University of Texas-Pan American. She was previously a faculty member of St. Mary's University. She received her Ph.D. in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Rice University, where she interned as a pre-doctoral Ford Fellow, and a B.S. in Mathematics from The University of Texas-Austin.

Dr. Nitin Naik is presently the President of the NASA supported Center for Educational Technologies in Wheeling, WV and also the Director of the Mid-Atlantic Broker/Facilitator program for the NASA Office of Space Science. He started working at NASA in 1992 at the Classroom of the Future Program, which serves as its research and development entity in educational technology. Dr. Naik has managed a variety of software development, knowledge management, computer visualization and multimedia networking efforts in the Office of Education at NASA. His current responsibilities include the NASA portal, innovative learning technologies and establishment of the CIO office for the Education Enterprise.

Dr. Naik received a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from University of Mysore in India. He also holds a M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, a M.S. in Systems Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, all from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. His doctoral research concentrated on multimedia networking. He has 22 years experience in information technology of which 15 years has been in application research.

Dr. Wardle joined NSF in 1990 as a Program Director in the CISE Office of Cross Disciplinary Activities (CDA), now the Division of Experimental and Integrative Activities (EIA). She has managed a number of research and educational programs including Research Infrastructure, Research Instrumentation, Major Research Instrumentation, Educational Infrastructure, Faculty Awards for Women, Professional Opportunities for Women in Research and Education, Collaborative Research on Learning Technologies and CISE Advanced Distributed Resources for Experiments. She has also headed a special CISE effort to increase opportunities for women in Computing and is currently leading a new CISE research initiative to explore the underlying reasons for the under-representation of women and minorities in the Information Technology (IT) workforce.

Dr. Wardle served as Deputy Division Director of CCR in 1995 - 1996, was appointed Deputy Office Head of CDA in September 1996, and Deputy Division Director of EIA in 1997. From August 1997 through December 1998 Dr. Wardle was a Visiting Professor at Howard University in Washington, DC, on leave from NSF.

From 1969 to 1975 she was a faculty member at Hunter College of the City University of New York where she was the prime architect of the undergraduate degree program in Computer Science. From 1975 to 1990 she was a faculty member at Boston University where she founded and chaired the Department of Computer Science. In 1980, while on leave from Boston University, she joined the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies as Associate Dean, later as Dean. At Wang Institute, Dr. Wardle established the School of Information Technology and implemented its first degree program, a Masters degree in Software Engineering.

Dr. Wardle's research interests have spanned theoretical physics, computer graphics, programming languages, software engineering and information systems. She received a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics in 1970 from the University of London, England.

Dr. Johnson is the Program Manager for Computer Research in the Mathematical, Information, and Computational Science Program in the Office of Science at the Department of Energy. He is responsible for enabling computer science research and high performance system software/tools including: programming models (MPI and Unified Parallel C), system software for terascale clusters, debugging and performance evaluation tools, software component architectures for high performance systems, and next generation operating systems.

Dr. Johnson joined MICS in 1999 after twenty-four years at the National Institute for Standards and Technology where he was the Associate Director for Computing in the Information Technology Laboratory where he planned and coordinated all of NIST central scientific computing and communication services and developed strategic plans for the future direction of all major NIST computing and communication facilities.

What does it take to be a leader? Are leaders born or can leadership be taught? While we have made great strides in terms of diversity in the computing sciences there are still too few leaders from underrepresented groups. This is particularly troubling at the national level where many strategic technical decisions are made.

At one conference convened specifically to address this issue, Dr. Richard Tapia stated, "Despite a generation of intense efforts, the nation continues to face the dilemma of perilously low minority representation in science and engineering. Even more troubling and threatening to future success is the lack of the next generation's minority national leadership."

This panel has convened several of the most respected leaders in their fields to share their thoughts on what is required to become a leader. Speaking from their own experiences, the panelists will discuss the qualities that they consider important to developing good leadership skills. Following this discussion, the audience will be invited to suggest and discuss strategies for developing the next-generation's leaders.

Voting problems associated with the 2000 U.S. Presidential election have spurred calls for more accurate voting systems. Unfortunately, many of the new computerized voting systems being purchased today have major security and reliability problems.

Barbara Simons was President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from July 1998 until June 2000 and Secretary of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents in 1999. ACM is the oldest and largest educational and technical computer society in the world, with about 75,000 members internationally. In 1993 Simons founded ACM's US Public Policy Committee (USACM), which she currently co-chairs. She earned her Ph.D. in computer science from U.C. Berkeley in 1981; her dissertation solved a major open problem in scheduling theory. In 1980 she became a Research Staff Member at IBM's San Jose Research Center (now Almaden). In 1992 she joined IBM's Applications Development Technology Institute as a Senior Programmer and subsequently served as Senior Technology Advisor for IBM Global Services. Her main areas of research have been compiler optimization, algorithm analysis and design, and scheduling theory. Her work on clock synchronization won an IBM Research Division Award. She holds several patents and has authored or co-authored a book and numerous technical papers.

Recently, Simons has been teaching technology policy at Stanford University. Simons is a Fellow of ACM and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received the Alumnus of the Year Award from the Berkeley Computer Science Department, the Norbert Wiener Award from CPSR, the Outstanding Contribution Award from ACM, and the Pioneer Award from EFF. She was selected by c|net as one of its 26 Internet "Visionaries" and by Open Computing as one of the "Top 100 Women in Computing". Science Magazine featured her in a special edition on women in science.

Simons served on the President's Export Council's Subcommittee on Encryption and on the Information Technology-Sector of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion. She is on the Board of Directors of the U.C. Berkeley Engineering Fund, Public Knowledge, the Math/Science Network, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, as well as the Advisory Boards of the Oxford Internet Institute and Zeroknowledge, and the Public Interest Registry's .ORG Advisory Council. She has testified before both the U.S. and the California legislatures and at government sponsored hearings. She was runner-up in the first election for the North America seat on the ICANN Board.

Simons co-founded the Reentry Program for Women and Minorities in Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley.

Rebecca Mercuri is an internationally recognized expert on electronic voting. Her 14 years of study on this subject include her present research affiliation with Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and prior work at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering where she earned her Ph.D. Dr. Mercuri was requested to provide testimony in Florida's infamous Bush v. Gore case and was cited in one of the briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. She has also given formal comment on voting technology to the U.S. House Science Committee, the Federal Election Commission and the U.K. Cabinet. In her spare time she serves as an emergency (Ham) radio operator and received a commendation for her work with the Red Cross during the 9-11 crisis. For over a decade, Rebecca has also participated in educational events to encourage women's involvement in the computer field.

Alice Allen has a comprehensive background, in excess of twenty years, in the Data and Information Management industry. Her areas of experience include Corporate management, Fiscal responsibility, Human resource and personnel; Strategic planning; IT Consulting; Networks; Database and Programming; Elections and Voter Management Solutions; Infrastructure and Technology planning; Computer Security; structuring Corporate and Client Relationships; and hands on experience within all phases of project planning, definition, design, and implementation.

Ms. Allen collegiate experience includes attainment of Bachelors and Masters Educational Degrees.