ICS News Archive

33 ICS students to attend 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference

Thanks to an award from the BRAID (Building Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity) Initiative, which aims to increase the percentage of women and students of color in computer science, the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) will be sending 33 of its female undergraduate and graduate students to the 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC).

“GHC will be a great venue for our ICS women to network, collaborate and find mentors among an inspiring community of women technologists from around the world,” said Sharnnia Artis, assistant dean of access and inclusion. “This is an especially important opportunity for the freshman and first-year transfer students we are sending.”

ICS students at GHC 2017.

The GHC 2018 conference will be held Sept. 26-28 in Houston and is produced by the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology and presented in partnership with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). GHC is considered the world's largest gathering of women technologists with more than 15,000 registered attendees. During this year's event, Informatics Professor Constance Steinkuehler will be speaking on "The Troubled Relationship Between Women and Games," while Informatics Ph.D. student Phoebe Chua will be presenting a poster titled "The Role of Culture in Elite Tech Companies."

In addition to the 33 ICS students attending the conference, UCI will be sending staff and faculty members who are dedicated to closing the gender gap in information and computer sciences, including Sharnnia Artis, assistant dean of access and inclusion; Kris Bolcer, ICS director of student affairs; and Debra Richardson, ICS founding dean.

Richardson said, “Attendance at GHC has been demonstrated to increase women’s success and persistence in computing, a field that has a shortage of women in the workforce. We hope that with continued support from the BRAID Initiative and other organizations we can continue to provide these important professional development opportunities for our ICS students.”

Congratulations to the following 33 ICS students who will be attending GHC 2018:

• Crystal Agerton
• Natalie Aguinaldo
• Emma Anderson
• Hina Arora
• Prachi Athavale
• Kanika Baijal
• Cheyenne Chavez
• Grace Choe
• Kai Yee Phoebe Chua
• Aliyah Clayton
• Alyssa Darjuan
• Nehal Desai
• Kristen DeVore
• Natalia Efremova
• Archita Ganesh
• Diana Grande
• Amanda Hernandez
• Sharon Hsu
• Hahnara Hyun
• Dianne Ison
• Rebecca Leung
• Michel Li
• Danielle Muhlenberg
• Princess Ozleene Osorio Pancubit
• Sri Ganga Bhavani Panda
• Roxanna Shaik
• Stephanie Tam
• Rieli Tjan
• Melissa Torres
• Melinda Tran
• Kayla Tran
• Chelsea Vong
• Greta Yu

The BRAID initiative launched in September 2014 in partnership with universities across the nation to increase the percentage of women and students of color majoring in computer science. Each university committed to a set of approaches to increase diversity within their computer science departments. Each department also committed to providing data for a research study that will document the progress made over the course of three years. UC Irvine is one of only 15 Building Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity Initiative institutions to proudly receive BRAID funding and the only school from the University of California family to be BRAID affiliated.