Anita Borg Institute Announces Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Keynotes and Plenary Panel

Speakers to Include Megan Smith, Fran Berman and Werner Vogels

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced today Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development, Google, and General Manager, Google.org and Fran Berman, Professor in the UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the first holder of the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD will be keynote speakers for the 9^th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), which will be held September 30-October 3 at the J.W. Marriott Starr Pass Resort in Tucson Arizona.

“women who could change the face of technology”

The second annual Plenary Panel of Technology Executives will include Linda Brisnehan, Vice President Military Support Programs, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Nora Denzel, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Payroll, Intuit Corporation, and Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer of Amazon.com.

The world’s largest gathering of women in computing in industry, academia, and government, GHC is a four-day technical conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Leading researchers and industry experts discuss their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today’s technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research, and engineering. Co-presented by the Anita Borg Institute and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the conference features more than 100 sessions over 8 tracks as well as invited technical speakers, panels, workshops, robotics workshop, new investigator technical papers, Ph.D. forums, technical posters, “birds of a feather” sessions, the ACM Student Research Competition, and an awards celebration. The theme of this year’s conference is “Creating Technology for Social Good”.

The 2008 GHC attracted over 1,450 participants from 23 countries and featured more than 300 presenters. GHC provides technical women with visibility, a sense of community, and critical social networks and mentoring relationships that improve female representation in the field. A survey of last year’s participants revealed that a significant percentage reported an increased passion and commitment to their roles as technical women after attending the conference. The survey also found that attendance had a positive impact on their professional advancement.

About This Year’s Keynote Speakers

Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development and General Manager, Google.org
Megan Smith was dubbed one of the "women who could change the face of technology" by the New York Times in August, 2003. Megan Smith oversees the Google team that negotiates early-stage partnerships, explorations and technology licensing deals. She also leads the Google.org team, guiding strategy and developing new partnerships and internal projects with Google's engineering and product teams. She joined Google in 2003 and has led several of the company's acquisitions, including Keyhole (Google Earth), Where2Tech (Google Maps), and Picasa.

Fran Berman, Professor in the UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Fran Berman is an international leader in the development of Cyberinfrastructure and has written more than 165 articles, editorials, and reports spanning the areas of high-performance computing, grid computing, scheduling, programming environments and middleware, cyberinfrastructure, and digital data stewardship and preservation. She is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and Senior Member of the IEEE. She is currently serving as co-Chair for the international Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. Starting Fall, 2009, Dr. Berman will be leaving San Diego for Troy, New York, where she join Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as Vice President for Research.

About This Year’s Senior Technology Plenary Panel Speakers

Linda Brisnehan, Vice President Military Support Programs, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company
Linda Brisnehan joined Lockheed Martin in 1986 as a communication software engineer. Her previous assignment was Vice President of Information Technology and chief Information Officer for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. She is on the boards of the Women’s Vision Foundation, Girls Inc and the Women’s Leadership Council for Mile High United Way.

Nora Denzel, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Payroll, Intuit Corporation
Nora Denzel leads one of the Intuit’s fastest-growing business units, focusing on delivering easy-to-use payroll services for small businesses. She serves on the board of directors for Overland Storage Inc., the Support Network and the Anita Borg Institute.

Werner Vogels, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Amazon.com
Werner Vogels is responsible for driving Amazon’s technology vision, which is to continuously enhance the innovation on behalf of Amazon’s customers at a global scale. Previously he was a principal investigator at Cornell University in several research projects that target the scalability and robustness of mission-critical enterprise computing systems.

Grace Hopper Celebration registration will open on June 1. Applications are being accepted for scholarships to attend GHC through May 27, 2009. For more information, visit www.gracehopper.org.

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

The Anita Borg Institute provides resources and programs to help industry, academia, and government recruit, retain, and develop women leaders in high-tech fields, resulting in higher levels of technological innovation. ABI programs serve high-tech women by creating a community and providing tools to help them develop their careers. ABI is a not-for-profit 501(c) 3 charitable organization. ABI Partners include: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Juniper Networks, National Science Foundation, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, NetApp, and Capgemini. For more information, visit www.anitaborg.org.