Trip Report: Rocky Mountain Celebration of Women in Computing 2016

Last month, I attended Rocky Mountain Celebration of Women in Computing 2016 (RMCWiC) along with Dr Natasha Flyer and (soon-to-be Dr) Delilah Feng.  The 280+ registered attendees (including over 160 college students) overwhelmed the Hotel RL in downtown Salt Lake City.

Can you find the NCAR CISL representatives in this photo?

The Rocky Mountain Celebration of Women in Computing, an ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Celebration event, is the biennial event for the Rocky Mountain Region that encourages the career interests of women in computing...

NCAR's Computational Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) jointly sponsors RMCWiC and we actively recruit visiting students and scientists at these meetings.

My favorite part was the poster session, where students presented their work.  The breadth, quality of work and enthusiasm were very high.  I enjoyed talking to the students so much, they ran out of dessert before I remembered they were serving it!

A very lively poster session.

Computing is very broad; even the work within CISL is very broad.  I lingered longest at the talks featuring embedded sensors, real-time data processing and data visualization.  When one student told me she was ready to tackle higher dimensional data problems, I was thrilled.

This student presented data visualization research about how to effectively convey uncertainty, a subject of high importance in meteorology and climatology.

If you are a student or recent PhD, consider applying to one of NCAR CISL's visitor programs.  We are particularly interested in hosting undergraduate and graduate students for our Summer Internships in Parallel Computational Science (SIParCS) program.  These summer internships pay local living expenses and cash stipends.  Furthermore, SIParCS students work with one or more mentors throughout their stay and may be awarded travel stipends to present their SIParCS work at conferences such as AGU and AMS.

I worked part-time or was a stay-at-home mom for many years before re-entering the scientific computing workforce.  Career re-entry candidates are also encouraged to apply.  Feel free to contact me about career re-entry opportunities offered by NSF, NASA and other government agencies.