MaSSSoftech

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced today the winners of this year’s Anita Borg Social Impact and Technical Leadership Awards and the Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award. The winners will be honored for their accomplishments and contributions to women in technology at an awards ceremony on October 1, 2009, during ABI’s 9th Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) in Tucson, Arizona.

The Anita Borg Social Impact Award honors an individual or team that has caused technology to have a positive impact on the lives of women and society or has caused women to have a significant impact on the design and use of technology. The 2009 award winner is Ekaterina Fedotova. Ekaterina Fedotova is the IDEA (Information and Dissemination & Equal Access) Project Director, a community-based network providing basic and job-related computer skills training to increase employability among underserved, disadvantaged populations in 51 cities across Russia's 22 regions. As Director of the IDEA project, she has motivated social change and empowerment through technology and opened the minds of generations of women and the broader community, to how they can use technology to improve their lives. The Anita Borg Social Impact Award is underwritten by Microsoft.

The Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award is given to a woman who has inspired the women’s technology community through outstanding technological and social contributions. This year’s winner, Ruzena Bajcsy is Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley where she is also Director Emerita of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), Over the past four decades Bajcsy has had an astounding impact in the fields of active vision, computer vision algorithms for medical imaging and telepresence. Dr. Bajcsy has pioneered new research fields, guided national policy regarding and lead the computing community in addressing social issues. She has broken barriers and opened up access for women as a role model, mentor and advocate. The Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award is underwritten by Cisco.

The Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award is given each year to a junior non-tenured faculty member under the age of 40 at an academic or research institution pursuing high-quality research in any field of engineering or physical sciences while contributing significantly to promoting diversity in his/her environment. The 2009 Denice Denton Award winner is Nadya Mason, Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Mason's research focuses on electron behavior in low-dimensional, correlated materials, where enhanced novel interactions are expected to give novel results. In addition to her research, Dr. Mason is a spokesperson for increasing diversity in physics and for creating a climate in academia that embraces and supports minorities and women. The Denice Denton Award is underwritten by Microsoft.
The world’s largest gathering of women in computing in industry, academia, and government, GHC is a four-day technical conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Conference registration is open until September 25, 2009. For more information, go to www.gracehopper.org.

About the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI)

The Anita Borg Institute provides resources and programs to help industry, academia, and government recruit, retain, and develop women leaders in high-tech fields, resulting in higher levels of technological innovation. ABI programs serve high-tech women by creating a community and providing tools to help them develop their careers. ABI is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. ABI Partners include: Google, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Intel, National Science Foundation, NetApp, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Thomson Reuters, CA, Intuit, Amazon, Facebook, Raytheon, and Genentech. For more information, visit www.anitaborg.org.