August 7, 2019 — ACM’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC), in collaboration with Intel, has announced the six recipients of the ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational and Data Science Fellowships for 2019. The fellowships are highly competitive, and are awarded after a rigorous merit review. For the first time in the fellowship’s history, all of the recipients are women. The fellowship is funded by Intel and is presented each year at the annual SC conference.

The fellowship was established as a five-year program to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the computing field. The fellowship provides $15,000 annually for study anywhere in the world.

“SIGHPC continues to believe that if we are going to broaden the range of expertise and ideas that form the foundation of our field, it is critical to focus on students and the early career stage,” says John West, chair of the fellowship for 2019. “Our partnership with Intel allows us to do just that, and we are grateful for their substantial commitment to this effort.”

Students were nominated by their graduate advisors. Nominees spanned disciplines from oceanography and linguistics to engineering and mathematics, and represented large, mid-sized, and small institutions in countries around the world. More than 85% of nominees were female, and 45% were identified as an underrepresented minority in their country of study.

The nominations were evaluated and ranked by a panel of experts (who were themselves diverse with respect to race, gender, discipline, and nationality) based on nominees’ overall potential for excellence in data science and/or computational science, and the extent to which they will serve as leaders and role models to increase diversity in the workplace.

Of the six students named as winners this year, all are women; four are underrepresented minorities in their country of study, and one is deaf. They are pursuing MS and PhD degrees in a variety of applied fields:

• Mariela Faykoo-Martinez (PhD, Genome Biology and Bioinformatics), University of Toronto
• Cynthia Garcia-Eidell (PhD, Earth and Environmental Sciences), University of Illinois at Chicago
• Brienna Herold (PhD, Computer Science), University of Minnesota
• Monsurat Olaosebikan (PhD, Computer Science), Tufts University
• Luana Pontes Ferreira (MS, Industrial Engineering), Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
• Isabela Quintela Matos (PhD, Chemical Engineering), Cornell University

Funding will be awarded in August. The winners will receive travel support to attend SC19 in Denver, Colorado (USA), where they will be recognized during the awards ceremony. They will also receive a complimentary membership in SIGHPC for the duration of their fellowship.

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Source: ACM