ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 18 -- The 2007 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference concluded this week with the presentation of numerous awards, wrapping up the most successful meeting since the conference was established in 2001.
This year's event drew 431 registered attendees, including 231 students and 62 faculty members representing a total of 101 universities. Through the support of many organizations, 133 students received scholarships to attend the conference. Additionally, 34 companies and research institutions participated in the conference, held Oct. 14-17 with the theme of "Passion in Computing - Diversity in Innovation."
Tapia 2007 was organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing and co-sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society, in cooperation with the Computing Research Association.
At an awards ceremony Tuesday night, Peter A. Freeman was presented with the Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing. The Tapia award recognizes an individual with outstanding achievements in scientific scholarship, a strong civic presence within the scientific community, and a dedication to the attainment of true ethnic diversity in computing and related disciplines.
Freeman, who is currently a director of the Washington Advisory Group and a professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology, was recognized for his work at the National Science Foundation, where he laid the groundwork for a number of diversity initiatives, including the ongoing Broadening Participation in Computing Program. From 2002-07, Freeman served as assistant director in NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate.
A special Tapia Achievement Award was given posthumously to Ken Kennedy, a Rice University professor who was one of the world's foremost experts on high-performance computing and was a champion for diversity throughout his lifetime. His award was accepted by his wife, Carol Quillen, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Rice University.
The conference also featured the first-ever Ken Kennedy Distinguished Lecture, given by Manuela Veloso, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who spoke on "Multi-Robot Intelligence."
Six students were also given awards for their research posters presented at the conference. First, second, and third place winners in each category will receive checks for $1000, $500, and $250 respectively, and will also be entered into the ACM Grand Finals for the Student Research Competition, to be held online.
In the undergraduate category, the winners were:
* First place: Michael Eagle, University of North Carolina - Charlotte, "Wu's Castle: Teaching for Loops and Arrays using Games"
* Second place: Jerry Backer, City University of New York, "The Effect of Memory Bandwidth on Processor Performance"
* Third place: Lonnie T. Parker, IV, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Learning Locomotion Behaviors for Adaptation of Omni-Directional Walking Patterns"
In the graduate category, the winners were:
* First place: Joy Kamunyori, University of Virginia, "Handling Self-Modifying Code Using Software Dynamic Translation"
* Second place: Tao Cui, Caltech, "Opportunistic Source Coding for Data Gathering in Wireless Sensor Networks"
* Third place: Talithia Williams, Rice University, "A Spatio-Temporal Model for Bias Estimation in Radar Rainfall Data"
"It was an extremely successful competition, and the judges' scores reflected the fact that the posters were high-quality," said Posters Chair Charles Koelbel of Rice University.
Tapia 2007 marked the first time that the Robotics Competition was held at the conference. Five teams of students representing four universities in the United States and Canada qualified for the competition. They designed, programmed and then sent their robots out on simulated "search and rescue" missions at the conference. Two teams were honored for their efforts in the competition.
The Robotics Competition Winner was the HMC Escher team from Harvey Mudd College in California. Team members are Vedika Khemani, Jessica Wen and Rachel Arce-Jaeger; the faculty advisor is Zach Dodds.
The award for Robotics Technical Achievement went to the Nexus 6 team from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Team members are Angelica Lim, Angelina Fabbro, Kathleen Tsoukalas and Lorin Beer, and the faculty advisor is Richard Vaughan.
About the Tapia Conference Series
The Tapia conference series honors the significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, University Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is internationally known for his research in computational and mathematical sciences and is a national leader in education and outreach programs. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books and more than 100 mathematical research papers. In addition to his academic positions, he is also Director of Rice's Center for Excellence and Equity in Education.
The Tapia 2007 Conference enjoys the financial support of a number of academic, research and business organizations at several levels:
* Platinum Supporter: the National Science Foundation.
* Gold Supporters: AMD, The Empowering Leadership Alliance: Computing Scholars of Tomorrow, Google, Microsoft, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Princeton University and the Rice-Houston Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate.
* Silver Supporters: College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, Hewlett Packard, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University, the University of California, Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and USENIX.
* Bronze Supporters: Auburn University, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University, Harvey Mudd College, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Center for Women and Information Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Computer Science at Tufts University and the University of Michigan.
* Contributors: IBM Research, iRobot, Northeastern University, Rochester Institute of Technology, the STARS Alliance, the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the University of South Florida.
For more information about the Tapia 2007 Conference, visit the Web site at http://www.richardtapia.org/2007/.
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