Anita Borg Institute Honors Three ``Women of Vision''

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) will honor this year's recipients of their annual Women of Vision Awards at a gala reception and dinner at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose the evening.

Three prominent individuals - Deborah Estrin, University of California Los Angeles; Leah H. Jamieson, Purdue University; and Duy-Loan Le, Texas Instruments - will be honored for their accomplishments and contributions as women in technology in the categories of Innovation, Social Impact and Leadership, respectively.

Keynote speaker and technology visionary Esther Dyson and master of ceremonies Sydnie Kohara, CBS 5 Eyewitness News Anchor will be joined by many Silicon Valley and high-tech luminaries from ABI’s partnering organizations, Board of Trustees and Advisors, including recent ACM Turing Award Winner, Fran Allen. The evening has resonated with high school and college-age women thirsty for role models, community and encouragement and many of the attendees of the gala event will be students from the local community.

Headlining an outpouring of corporate support is Gold Sponsor Juniper Networks. Cisco Systems, Symantec, and CBS 5 are Silver Sponsors and Google, HP, Xilinx and the Career Action Center are Bronze supporters. Numerous individuals and companies including – IBM, Wells Fargo, PARC, SJSU, Palm and others, have purchased tables in support of the event, their workforce and local students.

"This year's winners embody what is best in our community, our nation and our world," said ABI President Dr. Telle Whitney. "Women, individually and collectively, have the power to improve our world and change the face of technology. These women are using that power in ways that have earned them a rightful place as role models for the next generation. They are truly "Women of Vision," and we are proud to honor them."

         2007 Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology

                           Women of Vision

Innovation

Deborah Estrin

Professor of Computer Science at UCLA, holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, and is Founding Director of the NSF-funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)

Deborah Estrin is the 2007 Women of Vision Award Winner for Innovation. Deborah Estrin, is the 2007 Women of Vision recipient for Innovation for her sustained and significant founding research in network interconnection and simulation, embedded networking, sensornet research, and security. While many tout the value of multidisciplinary research in the sciences, Deborah has put this into practice as the founding director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a $40 million NSF Science and Technology Center at UCLA. CENS is a major research enterprise developing wireless sensor systems and applying this revolutionary technology to radically transform critical scientific and societal applications. The Center promises to impact the field in lasting ways by opening up an entirely new set of scientific applications. Under Deborah’s leadership, CENS truly exemplifies the best of what multidisciplinary and multi-institutional research can be.

Social Impact

Leah Jamieson

Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering & Co-founder of EPICS

Dr. Leah H. Jamieson is the 2007 Social Impact Women of Vision Award recipient. Dr. Jamieson is the Purdue University Dean of Engineering and is recognized for her work at the forefront of innovations in the education and social change as a co-founder and past director of the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program. EPICS is a service learning, multi-disciplinary engineering design program. For more than a decade EPICS has enabled students (and advisors) with different expertise to provide technical solutions to real social problems in their local communities, at Purdue, and at Universities throughout America and Internationally.

Leadership

Duy-Loan Le

Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Advanced Technology Ramp Manager, and Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments

Duy-Loan Le is the Women of Vision Award winner for Leadership and Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments and TI Program Manager for Laplace (a DSP chip for 3G base stations) and Manager of DSP Advanced Ramp. Duy-Loan has been breaking barriers and leading by example since she came to America from Vietnam in 1975 with her mother and 8 siblings. Duy-Loan graduated high school as Valedictorian at 16 and then completing her BSEE with honors three years later. At 19 she began her career at TI as a memory design engineer. She has lead successful teams throughout her career completing projects that have made a significant impact on the field of science/technology. In 2002, she became the first woman elected as a Senior Fellow and is one of only six employees to hold that title at Texas Instruments.

For more information: http://anitaborg.org/womenofvision/

About the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI):

In an increasingly competitive global marketplace the Anita Borg Institute provides resources and programs for industry, academia and government to help them recruit, retain and develop women leaders in high tech fields resulting in higher levels of technology innovation. ABI programs serve high-tech women creating a community and providing tools to develop their careers. The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) charitable organization. ABI Partners: Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Google, IBM, Intel, Cisco and Juniper Networks www.anitaborg.org.