Lance R. Collins in 2020 was named the inaugural vice president and executive director of the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus. Prior to that he was dean of engineering at Cornell. In 2011, he was part of the team that successfully bid to partner with New York City to build Cornell Tech. As dean, Collins accelerated the college’s diversity efforts, overseeing the increase in underrepresented minority students from 8 to 19 percent, and undergraduate women from 33 to 50 percent. Collins’ research uses simulation to study turbulent processes. In 2021 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Inspiration from “hidden figure”, Dr. Gladys B. West, who made seminal contributions to the global positioning system (GPS)

The Earth is not a perfect sphere. Indeed, it’s shape is far from round, and that complexity must be accounted for to achieve accurate GPS. My presentation chronicles the contributions made by Dr. Gladys B. West, an African American mathematician. Born in rural Dinwiddie County, Virginia in 1930, Dr. West studied mathematics at Virginia State University before joining the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, where she led the effort to accurately map the surface of the Earth, leading to centimeter precision in modern GPS systems. Her remarkable achievements against all odds are an inspiration to us all; however, this talk is not just a tale of individual exceptionalism, but rather a reminder of the lost opportunity incurred by society overlooking the talents that women and minorities can bring to the technological workforce. Indeed, this motivates our goal to make the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus the most diverse graduate tech program in the country.

Anjali is a hospitality technology professional with over 25 years of experience. Currently she is a customer platform delivery director at Hilton. In her long career at Hilton, she has helped launch many leading-edge technologies to craft seamless guest experiences. Anjali is passionate about innovation and building great teams. She enjoys coaching and mentoring others to become a better version of themselves.

Keynote

There is a whole big world of computing beyond the traditional technology companies that can lead to exciting careers. Through this talk Anjali gives us a glimpse of the technology that runs the international hotel chain giant and the endless opportunities it holds for women in technology. Anjali invites you to go over her journey at Hilton and share her personal experiences as a woman in technology and some compelling take aways to lead a fulfilling life.

Kendra is an Agile Transformation Lead Consultant for WillowTree Apps partnering with clients across all industries to build enterprise- and consumer-critical digital products. Kendra specializes in helping organizations transform how they build products, interact with customers, and foster great work environments; all while continuing to deliver software products on time primarily using Agile methodologies . Kendra has worked with multinational Fortune 500 companies across hospitality, e-commerce, streaming media, and education. Kendra has a Masters in Computer Science from University of Virginia where she participated in ACM-W. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), SAFe Program Consultant (SPC), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Master (CSM).

Agile Mindset through Games

Agile is a mindset that takes practice! This session is an extremely interactive experience that revolves around the Agile core values and principles that we will explore through challenges, games, and discussion. These values and principles underlay the meetings, ceremonies, and ways of working of the major Agile frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban. These frameworks are used in startups to major corporations with many customized flavors that are adapted through returning to the mindset as the guiding principle.

Sandhya Dwarkadas is the Walter N. Munster Professor and Chair of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. Previously, she was the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering at the University of Rochester, where she was professor of computer science with a secondary appointment in electrical and computer engineering, and also served as department chair for 6 years. In 2020, she received the Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award from the University of Rochester. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Rice University. She currently also serves on the Computing Research Association (CRA) board as well as on its committee to widen participation in research computing (CRA-WP).

Her areas of research interest include parallel and distributed computing, computer architecture, and the interaction and interface between the compiler, runtime/operating system, and underlying architecture. She was named a fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE for fundamental contributions to the design and implementation of shared memory both in hardware and in software, and to hardware and software energy- and resource-aware configurability.

Computing Research Careers

In this talk, Sandhya will give you a glimpse into the challenges and rewards of academic, industry, and national lab careers in computing research, and the skills for success in each.