Promoters and Prohibitors for a Career in CS
The panel discussion reflects on the keynote speeches and tech talks from earlier in the day, elaborating on career perspectives for young researchers from various perspectives. This includes the role of sponsors and mentors, hints on how to find promising research topics, guidelines for running impactful projects but also strategies for identifying and consequently avoiding risks and pitfalls. Panelists will share their best advice for women to succeed in the world of computing. The audience will have ample opportunity to bring in their individual perspectives and raise questions on how to promote the ups and how to prohibit or at least cope with downs during a career in computer science.
![By Geraldshields11 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](./panel_files/dame_wendy_hall.jpg)
Short biography
Dame Wendy Hall completed her B.Sc. in mathematics in 1974 and her Ph.D. in 1977. In 1994, Dame Hall was appointed the first female professor of engineering at the University of Southampton. Furthermore, she served as the head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science from 2002 until 2007.
In 2006, Hall became founding director of the Web Science Trust (at that time Web Science Research Initiative) together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbold and Daniel Weitzner.
Until now, Wendy received numerous awards for her work, most notable the appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2000) and the promotion to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2009).
Becky Plummer
Team Leader in Engineering at Bloomberg LP
Short biography
Becky Plummer is a Team Leader in Engineering at Bloomberg LP. She interned with Google and shortly after graduating from Columbia University she joined Bloomberg LP in 2006. She spent nine years in the New York R&D office focusing primarily on voice trading applications and recently relocated to the UK to focus on collaboration applications on the Bloomberg terminal. As a secondary role, she manages the global application developer advocate program that assists developers with their development tool questions.
Outside of the office, Becky has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity building homes globally and she is a FIRST Robotics mentor for the Fe Maidens from the Bronx High School of Science. She holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University and B.S. from the University of Maine.
Toni Collis
University of Edinburgh
Short biography
Toni Collis is an Applications Consultant in HPC Research at EPCC, the supercomputing centre at the University of Edinburgh. A Doctor of Philosophy in 2011 in Computational Physics, Toni specialises in HPC applications, performance optimisation and in particular numerical integration and multi-body simulations. Toni has an extensive background in managing software development projects, ensuring sustainability in research software and providing HPC services to academia, including as a member of the team providing the UK National HPC Service, ARCHER. Toni also teaches a course on Parallel Numerical Algorithms on an MSc in High Performance Computing and provides HPC training to academics around the UK.
Toni is Director of the Women in High Performance Computing initiative which aims to address the under-representation of women in the international supercomputing community, by providing women with opportunities to showcase their work, provide mentoring and networking opportunities, and leads research in the issues specific to the under-representation of women in HPC. Toni has also worked with a number of organisations and conferences to improve the representation of women and will be the Supercomputing (SC) conference Chair for Inclusivity in 2017.
Pearl Pu
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
Short biography
Pearl Pu currently leads the HCI Group in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). A native from Shanghai, she moved to the United States shortly after being admitted to the ZheJiang University. She holds a Master and Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Pu’s research is multi-disciplinary and focuses on issues in the intersection of human computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and behavioral science. Over her long career, she introduced novel interaction and interfaces that make it easier for users choose and decide. She is most credited for inventing example critiquing, a product search method for large electronic catalogs. She is also well known for designing novel user study experiments and pioneering user-centered recommender technology.
She actively participates in the scientific community, serving as general chair and program co-chair of the ACM International Conference on Recommender Systems (2008 and 2013), general co-chair of the ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (2011), program co-chair of the ACM International Conference on Electronic Commerce (2009), track co-chair for Behavior Analysis and Personalization at WWW 2012 and 2014, track chair for intelligent user interfaces at the International Joint Conference of Artificial Intelligence (2011).
She serves on editorial boards for a number of research publications, such as the ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, the User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction, the AI Magazine, and previously IEEE Multimedia. She is a member of the steering committee of the ACM International Conference on Recommender Systems.
She is recipient of 13 Research Awards from the Swiss National Science Foundation, 3 Technology Innovation Awards from the Swiss Government, and a Research Career Award from US National Science Foundation. She also co-founded three startup companies, for which she received the 2008 CHINICT Award and the 2014 Worldwide Innovation Challenge Award.
Jane Richardson
Regional Director, EMEA, Oracle Academy
Short biography
Jane joined the Oracle Corporation in 2003 as Senior Business Development Manager for Scotland/ North of England, with the responsibility of creating a strategy for Oracle’s business development, developing strategic business networks, and education and CSR programs.
Chief Executive of Electronics Scotland – the sectors’ Trade Association from 1999 to 2003. Having set-up the new trade association, Jane was responsible for strategy development, local and National government policy for the sector, and the development of education and training projects to support the electronics manufacturing sector in Scotland.
Jane was formerly Head of Inward Investment at English Partnerships, the UK Government‘s regeneration agency, and a member of the UK Government’s Invest in Britain Bureau - Committee for Overseas Promotion.
Suggesions or questions can be submitted via this Google-Form.