2013 Tapia Diversity in Computing Conference Celebrates Growth

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One of the most important issues we report on is the continuing need to educate young people to help build the next generation of the high performance computing community. With this in mind, I wanted to share a little bit about the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, which wrapped up their largest meeting ever in Seattle last week.

Sponsored by ACM in cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society and the Computing Research Association, the conference has a long tradition of providing a supportive networking environment for under-represented groups across the broad range of computing and information technology, from science to business to the arts to infrastructure.

This was truly an amazing three days in which we celebrated the diversity that each one of us brings to the field of computing,” said Tapia 2013 General Chair Juan Vargas. “Looking out at the attendees, their energy and enthusiasm was both gratifying and inspiring. Many are already looking forward to next year’s conference in Seattle.”

According to Vargas, the Tapia conference is clearly one of the most diverse in the computer science community. At Tapia 13, 51 percent of the attendees were women, Blacks and African Americans made up 43 percent, Hispanics and Latinos constituted 26 percent and Caucasians comprised 19 percent. Students, from freshman to Ph.D. candidates, made up 60 percent of all attendees. For 69 percent of those attending, this was their first time at the Tapia conference, and for many of them it was their first professional conference. A record number of students (twenty-one) presented their research and received advice from nine panelists during the 2013 Doctoral Consortium., a one-day workshop to support Ph.D. students as they work toward their doctorate degrees.

The 2014 Tapia Conference is now set for February 5-8, 2014. Read the Full Story.