The Tapia Conference would not be possible without the dedication and energy of its committee members, all of whom are leaders in their respective fields.

David Patterson (General Chair)

David A. Patterson was the first in his family to graduate from college and he enjoyed it so much that he didn’t stop until a PhD.   He then joined U.C. Berkeley in 1977, where he is Director of both the RAD Lab and the Par Lab. In the past, he served as Chair of Berkeley’s CS Division, Chair of the CRA, and President of the ACM. His most successful research projects have been Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC), Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), and Network of Workstations (NOW). This research led to many papers, 5 books, and about 30 of honors, some shared with friends, including election to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He was named Fellow of the Computer History Museum and both AAAS organizations. From the University of California he won the Outstanding Alumnus Award (UCLA Computer Science Department) and the Distinguished Teaching Award (Berkeley). From the ACM, where as a fellow, he received the SIGARCH Eckert Mauchly Award, the SIGMOD Test of Time Award, and the Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, He is also a fellow at the IEEE, where he received the Johnson Information Storage Award, the Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Mulligan Education Medal. He also won a Distinguished Service Awards from the ACM and the CRA. Finally, he shared the IEEE von Neumann Medal and the NEC C&C Prize with his book co-author John Hennessy, who is President of Stanford University.

Juan E. Vargas (Deputy Chair, Chair of Doctoral Consortium)

Juan serves as Principal Research Manager for the Microsoft Research’s Extreme Computing Group (MSR/XCG) since 2009. He was the University Relations Manager at Google from 2007 to 2009. From 1988 to 2007 Juan was a Professor of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of South Carolina, where he taught and conducted research on data mining, Bayesian networks, embedded and distributed systems, sensor networks, and biomedical engineering. His research is published in more than 60 articles, several book chapters, and many conferences. He earned a PhD from Vanderbilt University, a master’s degree from CINVESTAV-IPN (that included the basic sciences of the medical program), and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Juan received the 2008 Gold Nugget Award from UTEP, given each year to exceptional graduates from the College of Engineering.

Valerie Taylor (Organizer)

Valerie is the Head of the Dwight Look College of Engineering's Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, and is also the holder of the Royce E. Wisenbaker Professorship.  Prior to joining Texas A&M, Dr. Taylor was a member of the faculty in the EECS Department at Northwestern University for eleven years. She has authored or co-authored over 100 papers in the area high performance computing.   She is the director of the new Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT).  Dr. Taylor has received numerous awards for distinguished research and leadership, including the 2001 IEEE Harriet B. Rigas Award for a woman with significant contributions in engineering education, the 2002 Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni from the University of California at Berkeley, the 2002 CRA Nico Habermann Award for increasing the diversity in computing, and the 2005 Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing. Dr. Taylor is a member of CDC and ACM, and Senior Member of IEEE-CS.  Valerie E. Taylor earned her B.S. in ECE and M.S. in Computer Engineering from Purdue University in 1985 and 1986, respectively, and a Ph.D. in EECS from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1991.

Cynthia Lanius (Fund Raising Chair, Web Co-Chair)

Cynthia is an Independent Consultant helping to manage the National Science Foundation-funded Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance called the Empowering Leadership Alliance (empoweringleadership.org).

Manuel Perez Quiñones (Coalition to Diversify Computing Chair)

Manuel is Associate Professor of Computer Science, and a member of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Manuel holds a DSc in CS from The George Washington University. His research interests include human-computer interaction, personal information management, user interface software, digital government, and educational/cultural issues in computing. He is Chair of the Coalition to Diversify Computing (2010-2011), member of the editorial board for ACM's Transactions on Computing Education journal, and a founding member of the board of the non-profit Virginia Latino Higher Education Network. At Virginia Tech, he has been chair of the Hispanic/Latino Faculty and Staff Caucus, Associate Dean and Director of the Office for Graduate Recruiting and Diversity Initiatives of the Graduate School, and a Multicultural Fellow.

Tony Drummond (Student Research Posters Chair)

Tony is a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, his research interests are in scientific computing and high performance numerical modeling, in particular in atmospheric research.  He got his Doctoral degree from the French Institute National Polytechnique de Toulouse, and did his postdoctoral work in the Atmospheric Sciences department at UCLA.  He has other academic degrees from The University of Tulsa, The University of Texas at Austin and Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City.  At previous TAPIA Conference, he has twice co-chaired the Doctoral Consortium and also participated as a panelist.

José Muñoz (Opportunity Poster Lead)

José has over thirty-seven years of experience in Federal service and is a member of the Senior Executive Service.  He is currently the National Science Foundation’s inaugural Chief Technology Officer (CTO).  In that capacity, he is creating/exploring outreach opportunities (for example with industry) for NSF.  Previous to his current CTO position he served as NSF’s Director (Acting) of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure where he was its Deputy Director.  Dr. Muñoz has collateral duties in OCI in the area of high performance computing.  José received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Connecticut and is a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. He has several publications in the area of high performance computing (including a patent). He has served in various capacities in the Super Computing conferences. Dr. Muñoz chaired the federal government’s High-End Computing Interagency Working Group (HEC-IWG) and served on various committees and study groups looking at various aspects of technology and science.

Tony Baylis (Registration Chair)

Tony is an Assistant Department Manager for the Computing Applications and Research (CAR) Department in the Computation Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He is responsible for workforce planning and personnel management for more than 500 employees in the department. He directs the Computation Summer Student Program and will also work with colleagues in the Administration and Human Resources Directorate to improve the Laboratory's Summer Student Program (of which Computation is a major participant). A volunteer for various organizations, including ACM/IEEE SC conferences and the Richard Tapia Diversity in Computing conference, Tony has served as Treasurer of ACM SIGGRAPH for the past three years. In addition, he previously worked in the broadcasting industry as an independent consultant and contractor to the major television networks. Tony earned a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and completed an A3 Illinois Technology Leadership Program at the University of Illinois.

Jon Bashor (Public Relations Chair)

Tapia 2011 marks the third time Jon Bashor has served as the conference communications chair. He has also served as communications chair for the SC03 and SC08 conferences, as well as the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany. His main job, though, is the communications and outreach manager for the Computing Sciences organization at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Decidedly non-technical, Bashor sees his job as making computational and scientific accomplishments understandable to a broad audience, as well as helping students understand the rewards of a career in scientific computing. Bashor earned his BA in political science from California State University, Bakersfield, and his master's in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Hal Marz (Local Arrangements Chair)

Hal is a Specialist on the University Programs team and has been with Google since April of 2010. Born in Singapore, he lived both there and the Philippines before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area his junior year in high school. He graduated from Saint Mary's College (Moraga, CA) with a BA in Sociology/Anthropology. Hal's love for international travel feeds (pardon the pun) one of his passions - FOOD. Hal always believes in giving back to the community and regularly volunteers his time to several non-profits organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area  Hal is managing Google's sponsorship and local arrangements for the 2011 Richard Tapia Conference.

Vivien Jin (Google Sponsored Activities Chair)

Vivien is a University Programs Specialist who has been with Google for over 4 years. Born in China, she joined Google China as one of the earliest members of the HR team and set up the University Programs team there . She moved to California in 2009 and really enjoys exploring new things with great cultural sensitivity. Vivien is managing Google's sponsorship and activities for 2011 Richard Tapia Conference.

Jamika D. Burge (Scholarships Chair)

Jamika is currently a SR Behavioral Computer Scientist at i_SW, an Information Systems company in Arlington, VA that provides high-end, advanced technical and research services to the US Government and other customers. Most recently, she was a postdoc in the College of IST at Penn State (2007-2009), where she worked with John M. Carroll on wireless informatics initiatives for non-profit organizations.  Jamika completed her PhD in CS from Virginia Tech, where she was an IBM PhD Research Fellow. She has several publications in books and refereed conferences, and she is a member of ACM (CSE and CHI) and CDC (The Coalition to Diversify Computing)

Tiki L. Suarez-Brown (Scholarships Deputy Chair)

Tiki is an Associate Professor within the Information Systems and Operations Management Department, School of Business and Industry at Florida A&M University.  Her research interests include Management Information Systems, Collaborative Environments, and High Performance Computing.  Over the past several years Dr. Suarez-Brown has served on the following ACM/IEEE SC committees: Chair of the SC09 Broader Engagement (BE) Program, Communities Chair of the SC10 Student Cluster Competition, and Chair of the SC11 Student Volunteers Program.

Anthony Joseph (Doctoral Consortium Deputy Chair)

Anthony is an Associate Professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department at UC Berkeley. He has a PhD in Computer Science from MIT. Anthony's 's primary research interests are in Internet security, mobile/distributed computing, and wireless communications (networking and telephony). He is part of the RAD Lab and is exploring these areas in current (SecML, DETER, D-Trigger) and former (Tapas, Tapestry, Reap, and Sahara) projects.

Ellen Spertus (Lunch Coordinator)

Ellen is an associate professor of computer science at Mills College in Oakland, California, and a senior research scientist at Google, where she works on App Inventor for Android, a visual programming environment for creating mobile phone apps.  For the past twenty years, she has worked to increase the number of girls and women in computer science.  She received her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from MIT.  She lives in San Francisco with her husband, computer scientist Keith Golden, and their baby girl.