ACM-W – an initiative to promote women’s participation in research in CSE

Association for Computing Machinery-Women India (ACM-W India)’s workshop on ‘Women in Computer Science and Research’ was co-located with the 14th Inter-Research-Institute Student Seminar in Computer Science (IRISS 2020) on February 14, 2020, to support, celebrate, and encourage women in the computing field internationally. Starting the event Dr Heena Timani, Chair of ACM- W India and Co-Founder and Director of Iananya Datalytix Pvt Ltd, gave an introduction to ACM-W India’s mission and activities.

Dr Cherri M Pancake, President ACM, Professor Emeritus at Oregon State University and Director of Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering (NASCE), gave an inspiring keynote talk on ‘ACM Can Help Us Change Our Male-Dominated Field’. Addressing in a hall full of participants Dr Cherri Pancake said, “Women themselves need to act, learn to be more proactive in changing our male-dominated field. Women are still ‘outsiders’ in this field. There are still too few women in the profession of computer science for various reasons. Ultimately it is up to each of us to create change in our culture. Each woman has the capabilities for strong leadership and each one of us can be a ‘change agent’. Let’s work together to influence the field of computing.” She also elaborated on how ACM-W can help women in computing learn about change.

The day-long workshop had three invited talks – first by Prof Joycee M Mekie, Assistant Professor, IIT Gandhinagar; second talk on “Data Analytics” by Dr Lipika Dey, Principal Scientist, TCS Innovation Lab; third talk on “Building Technologies for Low Resource Language” by Dr Kalika Bali, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Lab, India. The event also had a panel discussion on “Women in Computing: Opportunities in Higher Education and Research” that was moderated by Dr Viraj Kumar, Visiting Professor, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. The panel members included Dr Meenakshi D’Souza, Associate Professor, IIIT Bangalore; Dr Arati M. Dixit, Senior Scientist at ARA, Research Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, NC State University, Raleigh, USA; Dr Nutan Limaye, Associate Professor, IIT Bombay; Dr Chitra Babu, Professor and HOD, SSN College of Engineering, Chennai.