Women in Computing Research

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QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Queen Mary, University of London is one of London and the UK's leading research-focused higher education institutions. Amongst the largest of the colleges of the University of London, Queen Mary's 3,000 staff deliver world class degree programmes and research across a wide range of subjects in Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws, in Medicine and Dentistry and in Science and Engineering.

BCS ACADEMY OF COMPUTING

The BCS Academy of Computing is the Learned Society within BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and is dedicated to advancing computing as an academic discipline. By developing and supporting a cohesive community inclusive of scholars, researchers and professionals with a shared commitment to the advancement of computing, the Academy aims to nurture ingenuity, inventiveness and innovation in computing. It is through our range of activities that we promote excellence in the creation, study and application of knowledge in computing.

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, promotes wider social and economic progress through the advancement of information technology science and practice. Bringing together industry, academics, practitioners and government to share knowledge, we promote new thinking, inform the design of new curricula, shape public policy and inform the public.

IBM

IBM is a globally integrated enterprise operating in over 170 countries. Today IBM UK has around 20,000 employees, bringing innovative solutions to a diverse client base to help solve some of their toughest business challenges. In addition to being the world's largest IT and consulting services company, IBM is a global business and technology leader, innovating in research and development to shape the future of society at large. IBM's prized research, development and technical talent around the world partner with governments, corporations, thinkers and doers on ground breaking real world problems to help make the world work better and build a smarter planet.

EPSRC

EPSRC is the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences, investing more than £850 million a year in a broad range of subjects – from mathematics to materials science, and from information technology to structural engineering.

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THE HOPPER COLLOQUIA

The model for the colloquium is the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing held annually in North America, which encourages professional networks of women in computer science. These American meetings are held as a tribute to Admiral Grace Murray Hopper - pioneer of the computer business language COBOL - who inspired many young US Naval computing students during her heyday and still continues to inspire many computer scientists around the world many years after her death.

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ORGANISERS: QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Tijana Timotijevic, Caroline Wardle, Sue White and Sonia Wilkie.

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ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES

High Performance Computing - where next?
Katherine Gunn, IBM

Abstract: High Performance Computing (HPC), aka Deep Computing, used to be the preserve of only the biggest institutes and the richest companies. With the advent of fast interconnects and cheaper, faster processors, access to supercomputing facilities has increased dramatically. The variety in current research undertaken using HPC resources, by both traditional users and more recent adopters, requires innovative architectures to be developed alongside existing technologies. Katherine will discuss some of the issues confronting HPC at present, including those surrounding Green Computing and Cloud Computing, and the ways in which the area of HPC may adapt and grow in the next few years.

Biography: Dr Katherine Gunn is currently the Technical Programme Manager for the IBM UK High Performance Computing Services Team. The HPC team is responsible for the installation of large supercomputers for customers worldwide. Prior to this, she worked as an applications specialist within the team, running customer performance benchmarks, code tuning, and advising on optimal architecture for customer applications. Before joining IBM in 2005, Katherine was a Research Fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy, at the University of Southampton for six years. Her research on the origin of the X-ray background radiation involved the numerical modelling of populations of active galaxies and quasars, and collecting data for multi-wavelength deep sky surveys, against which to test the models. She has a PhD in Observational Cosmology from the University of Durham, an MSc in Astronomy from Sussex University and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Bristol.

Having always been a keen advocate of the public understanding of science, Katherine is involved in IBM outreach programmes to encourage girls to consider careers in science, engineering and technology. She remains a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Southampton, giving talks to schools and astronomy societies.

Avoiding Careering: Tales from Startupland
Laura James, Makespace

Abstract: "Career" can be a challenging concept. It's often supposed to be a desirable thing, carefully planned and executed, but it can be elusive for many of us, and of course "careering" means out of control. Laura has worked in a wide variety of fields, organisations and roles, and until very recently had never had a job which she gained through applying in response to a job ad in the usual way. She will describe some of her experiences in businesses, large and small, the ways in which one can build a story of one's professional life without necessarily planning it from the start, and some of the things she's learnt along the way, which no career advice ever touched upon. Laura's talk will include thoughts on luck, the importance of coffee, the challenges and advantages of being a jack of all trades, and whether you can be a risk averse entrepreneur.

Biography: EDr Laura James is Co-founder and Director of Makespace, a non-profit engineering and manufacturing workshop currently bootstrapping in Cambridge, and is also Foundation Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation part time. Previously Laura has worked in high tech R&D in Cambridge and Silicon Valley at AT&T Labs, and in the very different working environment of innovation in research and teaching technologies at the University of Cambridge. Laura was the first employee and VP Engineering at AlertMe.com, a startup building consumer electronics for home monitoring and control (taking the technical side of the business from a back of the envelope concept to an operational service with a production line in China), and more recently was Head of Knowledge at True Knowledge, the makers of Evi.com.

Laura has a PhD and an MEng in Engineering from the University of Cambridge. She is an alumnus of the Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Award scheme and was a NESTA Crucible fellow in 2007. She has been a Chartered Engineer since 2006.

Microscopic Image Analysis For Biology
Nicole Kerrison, University of Leeds

Abstract: Imaging is used in many areas of biology, both large and small scale, from examination of cells under a microscope to following the movements of animals. Many areas of computing and engineering are now involved in trying to automate and assist in the analysis of biological images. Such work is vital to help us understand biological processes and how systems work, which has the potential to help in preventing and curing disease. There are a wide range of computing techniques used within this domain, to assist with, for example, visualisation, tracking, modelling and analysis of shape, texture, etc.

Nicole's main focus will be on discussing applications of existing, current and future work on microscopic images. She will describe some of the techniques used to obtain images and the challenges they present. She will then cover some of the methods used within the computer vision community to analyse images and some of her own research in the area.

Biography: Nicole Kerrison is a PhD student in the Vision group of the School of Computing in the University of Leeds. She joined the University to study for a BSc in Computer Science following years of working in the computing industry, including jobs in IT Support and Software Testing.

During her degree she developed an interest in artificial intelligence; particularly computer vision, which led her to undertake a final year project based on finding a person's location on campus from a photograph of a nearby building. She was awarded a scholarship from the Medical Research council to study for an MRes in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, where she began to research vision techniques for analysing and tracking cells from video.

Her PhD has followed on from this and she is currently modelling cell shape changes during movement, which allows the prediction of a cell's "normal" motion and shape. Such a model could have many uses, including detection abnormalities in cells, and improving the accuracy of future segmentation and tracking methods.

Science from the Sidelines: Negotiating Women's Authority in Higher Education
Evelyn Welch, Queen Mary, University of London

Abstract: As a specialist in the Humanities, computer science, mathematics and engineering can seem alien worlds. This is a relatively new phenomena -in the early modern period, philosophy and engineering were part of the same broad system of knowledge and women were generally excluded from both.
With the increasing convergence of arts and technologies in the 21st century through programmes such as Queen Mary's Media Arts Technologies or NESTA's investment in artists using digital platforms, the arts and humanities communities are increasingly working with computer scientists. This offers opportunities not only for interdisciplinary forms of engagement, but also provides a chance to peer into each others' cultures and hierarchies. What does it take to get promoted in each area? What different challenges do women face at different points in the transition from PhD to Postdoc, from Postdoc to Lecturer and from Lecturer to Professor? Can issues of equalities help us bridge the gaps between the Arts and Sciences?

Biography: Professor Evelyn Welch is Queen Mary's Vice-Principal for Research and International Affairs and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2006. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts. Evelyn Welch is an art historian with a special interest in European visual and material culture between 1300 and 1800. She is the author of Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (Yale,1995), Art in Renaissance Italy, 1350-1500 (OUP, 2000), and Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600 (Yale, 2005) which was awarded the Wolfson Prize for History. She is co-author (with Dr James Shaw) of Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Rodopi, 2011); and co-editor of The Material Renaissance (Manchester University Press, 2007), the result of a three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Getty Foundation funded project on Italian Renaissance consumption.

Her current work focuses on early modern dress and material culture. Professor Welch is currently leading a 5.5 million pound AHRC strategic programme: Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects. In 2012, she will take on the Directorship of the 4 million pound AHRC Knowledge Exchange Hub: Creativeworks London which will support research into London's Creative Economy and develop relationships between Arts and Humanities researchers and business.

In 2010 she was awarded a HERA grant to investigate early modern fashion in conjunction with the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Universities of Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki. The three-year research project is entitled Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800.