'CISters' attend 'Women in Computing' conference

CISters attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference included (front, from left): grad students Emily Gibson, Ilknur Aydin and Sara Sprenkle and (back, from left) Lori Pollock, professor of computer and information sciences at UD, grad student Sherol Chen, junior Yana Novikova, and grad students Oana Tudor, Seniz Demir and Rashida Davis.

1:37 p.m., Oct. 23, 2006--Seven UD graduate students, one UD undergraduate and one UD professor of computer information sciences (CIS) attended the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, held from Oct. 4-7 in San Diego.

The conference, which caters primarily to women involved in computer sciences, attracted more than 1,200 participants from 14 countries this year, and provided members of the UD team a chance to network, learn from colleagues and share their scholarship.

CIS doctoral students Rashida Davis and Emily Gibson each presented their research during the poster session, and CIS doctoral candidate Sara Sprenkle presented an overview of her thesis at the Ph.D. forum.

Because the conference predominantly draws women, this year's theme, “Making Waves,” put an emphasis on women's growing presence in the field of computer technology. The nine UD attendees, who, along with all the women in CIS, collectively call themselves “UD CISters,” found this emphasis particularly encouraging when networking.

“I never imagined the amount of positive energy that a crowd of 1,300 women can bring,” Oana Tudor, CIS doctoral student and first-time conference attendee, said.

Ilknur Aydin, a CIS doctoral student who also attended the conference for the first time, said that the collegial atmosphere facilitated learning, as well. “Most of the women were very approachable,” she said.

Davis, who presented a poster titled “Framework for a Tutorial Response Generator in an Intelligent Tutoring System,” was enthusiastic about the feedback she received while at the conference. “Lots of people stopped by and had questions about [my poster],” she said. “It seemed like I was talking the entire time.”

Gibson, who presented a poster titled “An Approach to Providing Remote Debugging Feedback Without Revealing Sensitive Information” also received plenty of feedback. “I didn't even have to explain the problem [to them],” she said. “The problem I'm working on is very relevant to debugging issues [that] industry developers constantly face.”

In a show of solidarity, the UD CISsters wore gold CIS T-shirts one day at the conference. “People noticed us and expressed an interest in learning more abut the University of Delaware and our department of computer science,” Tudor said.

For more information about UD's participation in the conference, go to [www.cis.udel.edu/~cisters/ghc2006].

Article by Becca Hutchinson

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