ICS News Archive

30 ICS students to attend 2017 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference

Thanks to an award from the BRAID (Building Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity) Initiative, which aims to increase the percentage of women and students of color in computer science, the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) will be sending 30 of its female undergraduate and graduate students to the 2017 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC).

“GHC will be a great venue for our ICS women to network, collaborate and find mentors among an inspiring community of women technologists from around the world,” said Sharnnia Artis, assistant dean of access and inclusion. “This is an especially important opportunity for the freshman and first-year transfer students we are sending.”

ICS students showing off their Anteater pride at GHC 2016.

The GHC 2017 conference will be held Oct. 4-6 in Orlando, Fla., and is produced by the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology and presented in partnership with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). GHC is considered the world's largest gathering of women technologists, with more than 15,000 registered attendees this year. In addition to the 30 ICS students attending the conference, UCI will be sending staff and faculty members who are dedicated to closing the gender gap in information and computer sciences, including Sharnnia Artis, assistant dean of access and inclusion; Kris Bolcer, ICS director of student affairs; and Debra Richardson, ICS founding dean.

Richardson said, “Attendance at GHC has been demonstrated to increase women’s success and persistence in computing, a field that has a shortage of women in the workforce. We hope that with continued support from the BRAID Initiative and other organizations we can continue to provide these important professional development opportunities for our ICS students.”

Congratulations to the following 30 ICS students who will be attending GHC 2017:

• Victoria Adebona
• Natalie Aguinaldo
• Emma Anderson
• Jenny Chau
• Grace Choe
• Elise Dang
• Alyssa Kristin Darjuan
• Kristen DeVore
• Ericca Go
• Sara Golshani
• Palak Banu Hirani
• Kim Lam
• Michel Li
• Alyssa Lingad
• Brooke Ly
• Sarah Memon
• Fattima Mora
• Tiffany Nguyen
• Princess Pancubit
• Rosetta Pendleton
• Nefertiti Rogers
• Xin Shen
• Stephanie Tam
• Vivian Thach
• Melissa Torres
• Suneela Ummadi
• Jacqueline Welham
• Alice Wen
• Alicia Xu
• Katie Yeh

The BRAID initiative launched in September 2014 in partnership with universities across the nation to increase the percentage of women and students of color majoring in computer science. Each university committed to a set of approaches to increase diversity within their computer science departments. Each department also committed to providing data for a research study that will document the progress made over the course of three years. UC Irvine is one of only 15 Building Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity Initiative institutions to proudly receive BRAID funding and the only school from the University of California family to be BRAID affiliated.

— Katherine Li Smith