Panel Discussion Sessions

P1: Leadership: A Diverse Perspective - Thursday, 10:30am to 12:00pm
P2: Grid Computing: The Promise and the Challenges - Thursday, 1:30pm to 3:00pm
P3: Beware of False Prophets: Which Initiatives (Designed to Increase Diversity in Computing) Really Work? - Thursday, 2:15pm to 3:00pm
P4: Next Generation Computing - Preparing the Future Workforce: An Industry Perspective - Friday, 10:30am to 12:00pm
P5: Research Opportunities in Bioinformatics - Friday, 1:30pm to 3:00pm
P6: Making the Journey of Graduate School Your Own: Success at Your Own Risk - Friday, 1:30pm to 2:15pm
P7: The Computer Science Academic Job Search - Friday, 2:15pm to 3:00pm
P8: Tapping Technology to Develop Diversity: Building the MentorNet Network - Saturday, 9:00am to 10:00am
P9: Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure - Saturday, 10:30am to 11:15am
P10: Implementation and Use of the Access Grid at MSIs for High Performance Computing Collaborations - Saturday, 11:15am to 12:00pm

P1: Leadership: A Diverse Perspective
Panel Organizer: Valerie E. Taylor, Texas A&M University
Panelists: Deborah Cooper, Independent Consultant; Mark Dean, IBM Almaden Research Center and Richard Tapia, Rice University

This panel focuses on the topic of leadership from the diverse perspectives of industry, academia and graduate school. The panelists will be asked questions by the moderator including: 1) How do you define a leader? 2) Please describe your path to leadership. 3) How do you motivate others to buy into and move forward with a common vision? and 4) How do you handle conflicts? Each panelist will also be asked to speak about one or two characteristics that he/she feels are critical for effective leadership. The panel will blend an open discussion about effective leadership with focused discussion that attempts to help attendees with learning about key characteristics required for effective leadership. The presentations will include sufficient time for questions.

Valerie E. Taylor, Texas A&M University, taylor@cs.tamu.edu

Valerie E. Taylor earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1991. From 1991-2002, Dr. Taylor was a member of the faculty of Northwestern University. Dr. Taylor has since joined the faculty of Texas A&M University as head of the Dwight Look College of Engineering's Department of Computer Science and holder of the Stewart & Stevenson Professorship II.

Her research interests are in the areas of computer architecture and high performance computing, with particular emphasis on mesh partitioning for distributed systems and the performance of parallel and distributed applications. She has authored or co-authored over 70 publications in these areas. Dr. Taylor has received numerous awards for distinguished leadership and research.

Deborah Cooper, Independent Consultant

Deborah Cooper, 2006 IEEE Computer Society President, has actively served the Society for nearly two decades. She currently serves on the IEEE Security & Privacy editorial board, Information Technology and Services committee, editor-in-chief search committee, and Conferences and Tutorial Board. A Golden Core member of the Computer Society, she is also a member of the IEEE, the ACM, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, and the American Association of University Women.

Cooper is president and founder of an independent consulting firm in Virginia specializing in computer security and information assurance. Earlier, at Unisys and System Development Corporation, she was Infosec business development director, director of advanced technology, and director of formal methods. Cooper received a B.A. and an M.A., with honors, from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also completed all but dissertation requirements for a Ph.D.

Mark E. Dean, IBM Fellow and Vice President, IBM Almaden Research Center

Dr. Mark E. Dean is an IBM Fellow and vice president of the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. He oversees more than 400 scientists and engineers doing exploratory and applied research in various hardware, software and services areas, including nanotechnology, materials science, storage systems, data management, web technologies, workplace practices and user interfaces. An engineer by training, Dr. Dean has more than 25 years experience in the IT industry - all with IBM - where he has been central to the design of a wide range of IBM computers.

Dr. Dean has held various positions in several different cities and IBM divisions. Prior to assuming leadership of the Almaden lab in 2004, Dr. Dean was vice president for hardware and systems architecture in IBM's Systems and Technology Group (STG) in Tucson, Arizona. While there, he significantly enhanced STG's hardware and systems strategy and architectures to support continued market share growth and industry leadership in IBM's server and storage systems business. Before STG, Dr. Dean was a vice president in IBM's Storage Technology Group, focused on the company's storage systems strategy and technology roadmap.

Prior to his time in Tucson, Dr. Dean was the vice president for Systems Research at IBM's Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he was responsible for the research and application of systems technologies spanning circuits to operating environments. Key technologies from his research team include petaflop supercomputer systems structures (BlueGene), digital visualization, design automation tools, Linux optimizations for servers and embedded systems, algorithms for computational science, memory compression, S/390 & PowerPC processors, embedded systems research, formal verification methods and high-speed, low-power circuits.

In 1997, Dean was named to be both director of the Austin Research Laboratory and director of Advanced Technology Development for the IBM Enterprise Server Group. Achievements there included testing of the first gigahertz CMOS microprocessor, design of a high-speed DRAM and development of the "cellular" server architecture, which is optimized for managing, storing, searching, distributing and mining complex data (such as video, audio and high-resolution images).

Before this, Dr. Dean held several engineering positions at IBM in the area of computer system hardware architecture and design in Boca Raton, Florida, and Austin. He has developed all types of computer systems, from embedded systems to supercomputers. He was also chief engineer for the development of the IBM PC/AT, ISA systems bus, PS/2 Model 70 & 80, the Color Graphics Adapter in the original IBM PC and numerous other subsystems. One invention - the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) "bus," which permitted add-on devices like the keyboard, disk drives and printers to be connected to the motherboard - would earn election to the National Inventors Hall of Fame for Dean and colleague Dennis Moeller.

Dr. Dean received a BSEE degree from the University of Tennessee in 1979, an MSEE degree from Florida Atlantic University in 1982, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1992. He has published papers in the IEEE Computer Society Press, MIT Press, and IBM Research Journal.

Dr. Dean's most recent awards include: member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, National Academy of Engineering, IEEE Fellow, the Black Engineer of the Year Award, the NSBE Distinguished Engineer award, induction into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, and recipient of the Ronald H. Brown American Innovators Award. Dr. Dean was appointed to IBM Fellow in 1995, IBM's highest technical honor. He is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. He has received several academic and IBM awards, including 13 Invention Achievement Awards and six Corporate Awards. Dr. Dean has more than 40 patents or patents pending.

Richard A. Tapia, North Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University

The symposium honors the significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, a mathematician and professor in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is internationally known for his research in computational and mathematical sciences and is a national leader in education and outreach programs. Dr. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books and more than 80 mathematical research papers. His current positions at Rice are Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics; Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Office of Graduate Studies; and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education.

Richard Tapia was born in Los Angeles to parents who separately emigrated from Mexico as young teenagers in search of educational opportunities for themselves and for future generations. Richard was the first in his family to attend college, earning his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Due to his efforts, Rice University has received national recognition for its educational outreach programs and the Rice Computational and Applied Mathematics Department has become a national leader in producing women and underrepresented minority Ph.D.'s in the mathematical sciences. Some of Dr. Tapia's honors include: election to the National Academy of Engineering (1992) for his seminal work in interior point methods; the first recipient of the A. Nico Habermann Award from the Computing Research Association (1994) for outstanding contribution to aiding members of underrepresented groups within the computing community; the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring from President Clinton (1996); appointment by President Clinton to the National Science Board (1996), the governing body of the National Science Foundation; and the establishment of a lecture series to honor Dr. Tapia and African American mathematician David Blackwell at Cornell University (2000). Dr. Tapia also received the Hispanic Engineer of the Year Award from Hispanic Engineer Magazine in 1996, and was inducted into the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference Hall of Fame in 1997. Dr. Tapia was inducted into the Texas Science Hall of Fame in 2004. Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology Magazine also selected him as one of the 50 Most Important Hispanics in Technology and Business for 2004.

P2: Grid Computing: The Promise and the Challenges
Panel Organizer: Charles Koelbel, Rice University
Panelist information was not available at press time.

One of today's most exciting developments in computational science is Grid computing, which promises to connect computers, databases and people in a seamless network to solve real-world problems. It is a pillar of NSF's cyberinfrastructure vision, from which they are expecting a lot:

Such environments and organizations, enabled by cyberinfrastructure, are increasingly required to address national and global priorities, such as understanding global climate change, protecting our natural environment, applying genomics-proteomics to human health, maintaining national security, mastering the world of nanotechnology, and predicting and protecting against natural and human disasters, as well as to address some of our most fundamental intellectual questions such as the formation of the universe and the fundamental character of matter.

-- Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure

Pretty heady stuff. But is it for real, or just hype?

This panel will discuss both the enormous opportunities for Grid computing, and the significant challenges in getting it working. Noted experts in the field will tell how the Grid is solving problems today that were impossible just a few years ago. They will also point out the need for contributions from a diverse group of researchers, such as the participants at this conference.

Charles Koelbel, Rice University, chk@cs.rice.edu

Charles Koelbel's bio was not available at press time.

P3: Beware of False Prophets: Which Initiatives (Designed to Increase Diversity in Computing) Really Work?
Panel Organizer: Wanda J. Smith, Virginia Tech
Panelists: Sandra DeLoatch, Norfolk State University; Lamont A. Flowers, University of Florida and Tracy Lewis, Radford University

Industry professionals are consistently reporting fears that colleges and universities aren't teaching students what they need to know to succeed in today's IT job market. In response, university educators and administrators are re-evaluating whether the computing curriculum, programs and services they offer effectively help students learn, persist and develop.

Our panel will propose a solution-oriented approach to address total life-cycle challenges of computing students' progression. We will describe new strategies and successful initiatives underway in some universities around the country. Our discussion will cover "proven" behavioral, administrative and technical initiatives that institutions can use to recruit and retain a steady stream of minority computing students.

While many of these initiatives have been discussed in the literature as well as at other conferences, the unique contribution of this panel is our examination of "what works" for students of color rather than the general population. Contrary to popular beliefs, many of the commonly recommended recruitment and retention initiatives increase stressors experienced by students of color and, in many cases, contribute to their decision to migrate out of computing.

Wanda J. Smith, Virginia Tech, wjsmith@vt.edu

Dr. Wanda J. Smith received her Ph.D. in OB and HRM from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a partner in H&S Enterprises, a firm comprising business skills, system and support experts specializing in Windows NT training, network integration and Internet solutions. She conducts consultant skills training, as well as technology diffusion, and organizational change seminars in the public and private sectors. Dr. Smith is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Virginia Tech and serves as Principal Investigator for the NSF-funded PACE Project.

Sandra DeLoatch, Norfolk State University, sjdeloatch@nsu.edu

Sandra DeLoatch presently serves as dean of the School of Science and Technology at Norfolk State University. She previously served for 18 years as the computer science program director and department chair at Norfolk State University. Dean DeLoatch has been Principal Investigator for numerous grants and contracts from the Office of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense. Her industrial experience includes research fellowships at IBM and NASA Langley Research Center.

Lamont A. Flowers, University of Florida, lflowers@coe.ufl.edu

Lamont A. Flowers is the distinguished professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Leadership, Technology, and Counselor Education and director of The Houston Center for the Study of the Black Experience in Education in the Eugene T. Moore School of Education at Clemson University. He has authored and/or co-authored more than 60 scholarly publications and his research has appeared in 21 different professional journals. Dr. Flowers has developed professional competencies such as conducting quantitative and qualitative program evaluations and assessments; constructing and administering paper and pencil surveys and online surveys; as well as analyzing large-scale datasets and national databases.

Tracy Lewis, Radford University, tlewis32@radford.edu

Tracy L. Lewis received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. She holds master's degrees in computer science from NC Agricultural & Technical State University and Virginia Tech, emphasizing software engineering and human computer interaction. She has industry experience in software design, development and software production research, serving as a member of the Operator Service Position Systems department at Lucent Technologies and principal research investigator in the Software Production Research department at Bell Laboratories. Dr. Lewis is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Science and Technology at Radford University.

P4: Next Generation Computing - Preparing the Future Workforce: An Industry Perspective
Panel Organizer: John S. Hurley, The Boeing Company
Panelists: John S. Davis II, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center; Robin Jeffries, Google; Elaine Weyuker, AT&T Labs - Research and Claudette Whiting, Microsoft Corporation

Ongoing advances in computing hardware, middleware and networking continue to drive new demands and expectations for solutions to complex applications by a variety of user communities. Computing no longer remains the sole domain of the "techie"; it has now become critical in non-traditional applied science fields such as media arts, communications and in resources as cool as Xbox and PlayStation, and by movie studios as diverse as Dreamworks SKG, MGM, WB and Disney. As a result, the caretakers of the necessary technologies will also require a broad range of advanced skills (computing, communication and networking). This panel will discuss some of the qualifications, expectations, obstacles and opportunities facing the Next Generation Workforce and how to prepare for success.

John S. Hurley, The Boeing Company, john.s.hurley@boeing.com

John S. Hurley is responsible for the development and implementation of Boeing's Grid technologies. He is a past chair of the Coalition to Diversify Computing; editor-at-large for the GRIDtoday newsletter; a collaborator on the Globus Toolkit and GRIA Projects. He is a member of the Advisory Committee, Global Grid Forum Advisory Committee, and was an invited speaker at the Latin America and U.S., Grid VIP Summits held in Costa Rica and Chicago in 2005.

Hurley joined Boeing after nine years as an associate professor of electrical engineering at Clark Atlanta University (CAU). Also at CAU, Hurley was the director of the Scalable and Embedded Applications Center; assistant VP for Information Technology and CIO. Hurley has also served as the associate director of the Army Center of Excellence in Electronic Sensors and Combat. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Hurley has served as a judge of the 2005 IBM North America Grid Scholars Challenge and is presently the coordinator of HPC Analytics Challenge at the 2005 Supercomputing Conference to be held in Seattle, WA, in November 2005. He was also recently appointed to the editorial advisory board for the publication, From Technology Vision to Business Advantage: The Emergence of Clusters, Grid and Service Oriented IT.

John S. Davis II, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, davisjs@us.ibm.com

John S. Davis II is a researcher at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center just north of New York City in Hawthorne, NY. His research interests include pervasive and context-aware computing, privacy and concurrent systems. He has numerous publications on applications of contextual data and he recently filed his first patent entitled "Aggregation of sensory data for distributed decision-making." Prior to beginning his career with IBM, John earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley and his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering at Howard University. While a graduate student, John co-founded Yellow Brick WebWorks, an Internet Website design firm. Now and throughout his years as an undergraduate and graduate student, John has actively participated in the community as a mathematics tutor to middle school and high school students. Recreationally John is an avid downhill skier and music fan and he loves the challenge of a good jigsaw puzzle.

Robin Jeffries, Google, robin@jeffries.org

Robin Jeffries is a user interface designer at Google. She previously was a distinguished engineer with Sun Microsystems, and before that did research in Human-Computer Interaction at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and Carnegie Mellon University. She is a recipient of the 2004 ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award, is technical program chair of CHI 2006, and serves on the advisory board of the Anita Borg Institute. She is also "Her Systers' Keeper" - moderator of the systers electronic community of 2500 women in computing.

Elaine Weyuker, AT&T Labs - Research, weyuker@research.att.com

Elaine Weyuker is a researcher at AT&T Labs who specializes in empirical software engineering and testing research. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Fellow and an AT&T Fellow. She is the co-chair of the ACM Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W) and a member of the Coalition to Diversify Computing's Steering Committee. She was the 2004 recipient of the Harlan D. Mills Award, the Rutgers University 50th Anniversary Outstanding Alumni Award, and the AT&T Chairman's Diversity Award. Before moving to AT&T, she was a computer science professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of NYU.

Claudette Whiting, Microsoft Corporation, cwhiting@microsoft.com

As senior director of diversity for Microsoft Corporation, Claudette J. Whiting leads the company's corporate diversity efforts. She plays a central role in helping Microsoft meet its goal of becoming the high-tech industry leader in workplace diversity. In addition, she is responsible for Microsoft's outreach to diverse populations.

Considered an industry expert in workforce diversity initiatives, Whiting is a frequent lecturer on leading change in corporate America and serves on numerous task forces and committees that focus on organizational change. From 1995-1997, she chaired the Workforce Diversity Council of The Conference Board - a global organization of Fortune 500 member companies - which focuses on improving the business enterprise. She also played a major role in developing and launching The Conference Board's first-ever Diversity Conference. More recently Whiting was named to the Board of Advisors of Catalyst, one of the nation's premiere nonprofit organizations striving to advance women in business and the professions. She also serves on Catalyst's Women of Color Advisory Board.

P5: Research Opportunities in Bioinformatics
Panel Organizer: Tiffani L. Williams, Texas A&M University
Panelists: Stephanie Forrest, University of New Mexico and Elebeoba E. May, Sandia National Laboratories

Bioinformatics is one of the most exciting interdisciplinary fields today. The integrated use of information technology, mathematics, and statistics to solve biological problems led to the successful completion of the Human Genome Project and is helping reconstruct the "Tree of Life", the evolutionary tree of all known organisms. Thus, this 90-minute invited talks session in bioinformatics will be of great interest to participants of the Tapia symposium. There are many ripe problems in the field waiting to be solved, which could of special interest to students that need thesis or senior projects. The format of the invited session will include three short talks. Specifically, each invited speaker will give a short 20-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes reserved for questions.

Tiffani L. Williams, Texas A&M University, tlw@cs.tamu.edu

Tiffani L. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University. During the 2004-2005 academic year, she was the Edward, Frances, and Shirley B. Daniels Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. She earned her B.S. in computer science from Marquette University and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Central Florida. Afterward, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Mexico. Her honors include a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship. Her research interests are in the areas of bioinformatics and high-performance computing.

Stephanie Forrest, University of New Mexico

Stephanie Forrest is Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Professor Forrest received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer and communication sciences from the University of Michigan. Before joining UNM she worked for Teknowledge Inc. and was a Director's Fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory. She is currently a member of the Santa Fe Institute science board and served as SFI's Interim Vice President 1999-2000. Her research interests are in adaptive systems, including genetic algorithms, computational immunology, biological modeling and computer security.

Elebeoba E. May, Sandia National Laboratories

Elebeoba E. May joined Sandia National Laboratories in May 2002 after receiving her doctorate degree in computer engineering from North Carolina State University. As a senior member of the technical staff in the Computational Biology Department, Elebeoba has contributed to the SNL's systems biology efforts by expanding and applying massively parallel circuit simulation capabilities to the analysis and simulation of biological pathways, whole-cell networks and multi-cellular organisms and cell cultures. Additionally, her current research includes the design and development of intelligent DNA-based sensors, and the use of information and coding theory to mathematically quantify genetic regulatory systems.

P6: Making the Journey of Graduate School Your Own: Success at Your Own Risk
Panel Organizer: Jamika D. Burge, Virginia Tech
Panelists: E. Vincent Cross, II, Auburn University; Brandeis K. Hill, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Azzari C. Jarrett, Northwestern University and Dale-Marie Wilson, Auburn University

This professional development session will present, "Making the Journey of Graduate School Your Own," in which we will discuss important aspects of succeeding (and not succeeding) within the graduate program. This panel seeks to inform M.S. and Ph.D. students about the graduate degree process, and it is composed of senior Ph.D. candidates at leading research universities. The target audience is current graduate students (and undergraduates) interested in learning the specifics of graduate school (i.e., what graduate school is all about) and what it takes to succeed in graduate school. To this end, panelists will discuss topics that are fundamental to success (and failure) in graduate school. There is no, single 'roadmap' that defines graduate success. This panel seeks to encourage graduate students that their experiences are unique, and that ultimately, they control their progress and their success.

Jamika D. Burge, Virginia Tech, jamika@vt.edu

Jamika D. Burge is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Computer Science Department at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, where she is affiliated with the Center for Human Computer Interaction (CHCI). Her research interests include HCI, computer-supported cooperative work and psycholinguistics. Her dissertation research examines technology use in situations that, by virtue of high emotional involvement, are of crucial interest to the communicating parties. Jamika is an IBM Research Fellow (2005-2006) and has done research at IBM Research (Almaden and Watson). She is president of the VT CS Grad Council, and she has several publications in refereed conference proceedings.

E. Vincent Cross, II, Auburn University

E. Vincent Cross, II is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science Department at Auburn University, in Auburn, AL. He is the team captain of the Spoken Language Systems and Multimodal Applications for the Human Centered Computing Lab (HCCL). His research interest is in the area of human-computer interaction with a focus on conversational user interfaces in conjunction with Multimodal Interfaces. Vince is a Southern Regional Education Board fellow (SREB) and has worked with the Naval Research Laboratory where he enhanced the conversational interfaces on their advanced robot systems.

Brandeis K. Hill, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Brandeis K. Hill is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. Her research interests are in database systems, query processing and optimization, rank aggregation methods, caching architectures and indexing schemes. Her dissertation research examines a framework that would produce the optimal rank aggregation method, which discovers and uses the most useful data, to increase the accuracy and relevance of search query results. Brandeis has had several internships at the IBM Almaden Research Center and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Azzari C. Jarrett, Northwestern University

Azzari C. Jarrett is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Her research interests center in the area of HCI, computer supported cooperative work and online communities. Azzari's dissertation research investigates how users interact with news aggregators in order to alleviate information overload through social navigation techniques. She is a David and Lucile Packard Graduate Scholar, has publications in peer-reviewed conference proceedings, and has had internships at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.

Dale-Marie Wilson, Auburn University

Dale-Marie Wilson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Auburn University in Auburn, AL, where she is the team captain for the User Interfaces and Databases division of the Human Centered Computing Lab (HCCL). Her research interests are human-computer interaction with an emphasis on multimodal interfaces and educational technologies. For Dale-Marie's dissertation, she will develop an interactive multimodal technical assistant. Dale-Marie was acknowledged as the Top Minority Graduate Engineering Student for 2004, and she also has several publications in conference proceedings.

P7: The Computer Science Academic Job Search
Panel Organizers: Juan E. Gilbert, Auburn University and Bryant York, Portland State University

When computer science Ph.D. candidates complete the requirements for their degree, they are presented with three major employment options: post-doctoral research, corporate or academic employment. In this panel, Gilbert and York will address the pursuit of computer science faculty positions. The panel will outline the process from knowing when and where to search for academic job opportunities to negotiating the academic job offer. The panel will inform future computer science Ph.D. graduates on the entire process of securing the best academic employment opportunity.

Juan E. Gilbert, Auburn University, gilbert@auburn.edu

Dr. Juan E. Gilbert is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Software Engineering Department at Auburn University. He also directs the Human-Centered Computing (HCC) Lab. Dr. Gilbert advises 20 graduate students, of which 10 are Ph.D. students. His research is in human-centered computing with an emphasis on spoken language systems, human-computer interaction, advanced learning technologies and databases. Dr. Gilbert is a founding member of the Institute for African American ECulture (http://www.iaaec.org/) and he is the current president of Brothers of the Academy Institute (http://www.brothersoftheacademy.org/).

Bryant York, Portland State University, york@cs.pdx.edu

Dr. Bryant York is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Portland State University. He was a researcher at IBM Research Labs and Digital Equipment Corporation for several years before coming to academia. In addition to his 17 years in academia, Dr. York spent a year as a federal program director at the National Science Foundation. His research specialty for many years has been the design of parallel and distributed algorithms for large-scale scientific computations and he currently maintains an active research project in this area through collaboration with atmospheric scientists at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. In recent years he has returned to some earlier work in artificial intelligence. In his adaptive learning lab, he and his students are integrating machine learning, data mining and traditional AI techniques to improve aspects of human cognition. Dr. York is a founding member of the Institute for African American ECulture (http://www.iaaec.org/).

P8: Tapping Technology to Develop Diversity: Building the MentorNet Network
Panel Organizer: Carol B. Muller, MentorNet
Panelists: Camille M. Smith, Booz Allen Hamilton

MentorNet (http://www.MentorNet.net), the E-Mentoring Network for Diversity in Engineering and Science, is a nonprofit organization which has matched more than 13,000 students and professionals in one-on-one mentoring relationships, conducted over e-mail. Though MentorNet initially focused primarily on women, in 2005 it is expanding its mission to include all underrepresented groups in engineering and science. In 2004-05, among the proteges and mentors matched, 13% of proteges and 32% of mentors were male; 19% were in computer science or computer engineering; among proteges, 8% were African American, 6% Hispanic, 1% Native American or Alaskan Native, and 2% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

MentorNet works in partnership with a growing number of colleges and universities, corporations, government labs and professional societies. Each organization provides financial support and outreach to prospective mentors and proteges. Complementing mentoring relationships between students and professionals in industry and government, an academic career e-mentoring program, initiated in 2003, matches graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty with tenured faculty members as e-mentors. Mentoring relationships last eight months at time. This session will provide an overview of MentorNet - its programs, underpinning IT systems, organization, and results, and a conversation with both mentors and proteges who have participated.

Carol B. Muller, MentorNet, cbmuller@mentornet.net

Carol B. Muller, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of MentorNet (http:/www.MentorNet.net), the E-Mentoring Network for Diversity in Engineering and Science, a nonprofit organization, and consulting associate professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. An educator and social entrepreneur, she has spent more than 25 years in higher education, including work in academic administration, strategic planning and budget development, external relations, faculty recruitment, admissions, educational program development, implementation, and evaluation, and facilities program planning and development. A longstanding interest in gender equity in education and employment, coupled with professional work in engineering and science education beginning in 1987, prompted her to develop a number of new initiatives to tap the full range of human resources in scientific and technical pursuits. Both the Women in Science Project at Dartmouth, developed when she served as associate dean for Thayer School of Engineering, and MentorNet have been awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. Dr. Muller has authored numerous papers, is frequently an invited speaker, has received grants for her work from private foundations, corporations, and the federal government, a variety of awards, and serves on a number of boards. A.B. 1977 (philosophy/English), Dartmouth College; A.M. 1981, Ph.D. 1985 (Administration & Policy Analysis), Stanford University.

Camille M. Smith, Booz Allen Hamilton

Camille M. Smith's bio was not available at press time.

P9: Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure
Panel Organizer: Ann Redelfs, Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure
Panelist information was not available at press time.

The goal of Engaging People In Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC) is to build human capacity by creating awareness of the opportunities afforded through cyberinfrastruture(CI) and by educating and training a diverse group of people in all stages of life from K-12 to professional practice to fully participate in the CI community as developers, users, and leaders. Strategies designed to meet this goal include:

1. Providing an integrated spectrum of computational science education and training in the use of tools and resources, for science and math education at all levels,
2. Enabling access to advanced technologies and tools in education and outreach,
3. Ensuring diversity by both supporting specific access and inclusion projects and infusing every aspect of EPIC with diversity, access, and inclusion, and
4. Establishing a large energized community of educators, students, researchers, and citizens engaged in developing and using cyberinfrastructure.

An extensive cohort of partners will implement activities that support these strategies: workshops and meetings; "train the trainers" activities; professional development, mentoring, and youth programs; diversity and accessibility programs; development of learning materials, software, and simulation tools, and online dissemination of materials, tools, resources, guides, reports and best practices.

Ann Redelfs, Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure, ann@redelfs.us

Ann Redelfs' bio was not available at press time.

P10: Implementation and Use of the Access Grid at MSIs for High Performance Computing Collaborations
Panel Organizer: Susan T. Brown, University of Hawaii
Panelists: Alson Been, Bethune-Cookman College; Amado Gonzalez. Florida International University; Marlow Hinton, North Carolina A&T State University; Stephenie A. McLean, Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Texas at Austin; Johnnie D. Spraggins, Our Lady of the Lake University; Tiki L. Suarez, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, Boston University

Through the activities of the Minority Serving Institution Consortium (MSIC), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) across the nation have been using the Access Grid (AG) technology to provide a regular meeting place to collaborate, plan and stretch the minimal travel resources available while staying in contact. Members of this panel will discuss their experiences with the technology, problems they face gaining acceptance and use at their institutions, technical hurdles, benefits they have reaped from the experience, and what steps other institutions can take to use this technology and join the cyberinfrastructure community. They will also discuss ways that they are utilizing the AG to advance other cutting-edge technologies, like high performance computing and grid computing. If possible, this panel will be supplemented with a demo of the AG technology.

Researchers interested in staying connected with the high performance community through collaborative technology are the primary targets of this panel. They will hear how other institutions have implemented collaborative technologies and used them to benefit their research. They will also hear about the barriers, both social and economic, that they had to overcome to get there.

All the panel members are members of the MSIC and experienced AG users and/or operators.

Susan T. Brown, University of Hawaii, stbrown@hawaii.edu

Susan Thomas Brown is the director of High Performance Computing (HPC) Outreach at the University of Hawaii (UH). She also leads the Education, Outreach, and Training Coordination component of the High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) Programming Environment and Training (PET) Program. Dr. Brown's background is in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and she received her Ph.D. at Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium in 1986. Her first experience with supercomputers was while working for Norsk Hydro, in Porsgrunn, Norway, running a CFD problem on the Cray in Trondhiem. She spent 10 years in contract research for Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and became acquainted with the Ohio Supercomputer Center, eventually taking a job there. She worked on outreach to women in computing and federal program development and support. From there, Dr. Brown moved to Hawaii to work with the UH community and Maui High Performance Computing Center and the MSI community as part of the PET Outreach.

Alson Been, Bethune-Cookman College, beena@cookman.edu

Alson Been, director for Information Technology at Bethune-Cookman College, is responsible for all administrative and academic computing, telecommunications and networking. He has a B.S. from Bethune-Cookman College, a master's from Strayer University in Virginia, and is a graduate of Harvard University's MDP Program.

Mr. Been has more than 13 years of experience in information technology. Before becoming the director for Information Technology at Bethune-Cookman College, he served for 10 years at Bethune-Cookman College in positions including the director of networking, and director of computer applications development. Over the last four years, he has given a number of presentations, including the Access Grid and its uses, and assisted in teaching a number of workshops centered on incorporating modeling and computation into mathematics and science courses at all levels with the Shodor Educational Foundation.

He also serves as senior member of the Minority Serving Institutions Network (MSIN) which works to build a 21st century cyberinfrastructure (CI) that best serves a diverse community of scientists, researchers and IT administrators. He also serves as a consultant for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) in the U.S. and in South Africa on information technology in higher education.

Amado Gonzalez, Florida International University, Amado.Gonzalez@fiu.edu

Amado Gonzalez is director of Access Grid activities at Florida International University and the Graphic Simulation Laboratory, where he holds responsibility for coordinating collaborative educational environments and has worked on various national projects. He is the principal investigator for the Minority Serving Institution Virtual Institute for EPIC - Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure in collaboration with Stephenie McLean at Texas Advanced Computing Center, Roscoe Giles at Boston University, and Greg Moses at University of Wisconsin at Madison. Amado Gonzalez is a founding member of the Minority Serving Institution Network, and was instrumental in acquiring an Access Grid node for FIU's College of Engineering and Computing, which was made possible by the Advanced Networking with Minority Serving Institutions (AN MSI) program. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), AN-MSI is program of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (EOT-PACI).

Amado Gonzalez has been active in initiatives to advance high performance computing, scientific visualization, computational science, Access Grid and tiled display walls at Florida International University. He is also a member of the Latin American Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions which has over 45 participating Institutions.

Cornelius Marlow Hinton, North Carolina A&T State University, mhinton@ncat.edu

Dr. C. Marlow Hinton is the director of research computing and the leader of the team for implementing grid computing for multidisciplinary research at North Carolina A&T State University. He is currently creating a research grid environment for support of all of the campus research efforts including engineering, genomics, bioinformatics, and life sciences and high performance computing. He also oversees the academic and research computational laboratories on campus as well as the Student Technical Services organization. He has a strong background in database systems, grid computing and project management and has taught courses and has published papers in these respective areas. He has over 29 years in industry and academia and is a PMP (Project Management Professional). He also served as the director of the Center for Distance Learning for the university prior to assuming his current position.

Dr. Hinton graduated cum laude from N.C. A&T State University in the field of Electrical Engineering. He later went on to obtain graduate and postgraduate degrees in computer science from the Univerisy of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. He is also a graduate of Jacksonville Theological Seminary and is an ordained licensed minister. Additionally, he has a master's certificate in project management from Stevens Institute of Technology.

He currently resides in Greensboro with his wife Wanda. They have two daughters, Jamila and Nikki, and two grandsons, Bryant and Javier.

Stephenie A. McLean, Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Texas at Austin, mclean@tacc.utexas.edu

Stephenie McLean is the Education, Outreach and Training Director at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) located on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to arriving at TACC, she was the training and outreach manager for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). During much of her career, Stephenie has worked to provide executive awareness, faculty development and educational opportunities to underrepresented faculty and students in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. Stephenie is the director of the Minority Serving Institutions Network (MSIN), which aims to build a pathway of diversity in advanced computing and computational science. Stephenie was recognized for her work in increasing diversity in high performance computing as one of HPCWire's "people to watch in 2004".

Stephenie holds a M.S. in Journalism from Murray State University. She is a member of the Institute for African American E-Culture (iAAEC), ACM, Global Grid Forum (GGF), Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) and serves on the 2005 Supercomputing Conference Executive Planning Committee.

Johnnie D. Spraggins, Our Lady of the Lake University, spraj@lake.ollusa.edu

Johnnie Spraggins, Ph.D. (University of Michigan- Ann Arbor), is an assistant professor in sociology, and his interests include organizational and community change in an international context, the sociology of Asia, the family, and qualitative methodology. He is advisor for students of sociology, the student club, and Alpha Kappa Delta, the Sociology Honorary Society.

Tiki L. Suarez, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, tiki.suarez@famu.edu

Tiki Suarez is the daughter of CSM(Ret.) Louis and Clara Suarez. She was born in Fresno, CA, and has moved extensively throughout the United States and Europe. She received her B.S./M.S. degrees in computer science from Clark Atlanta University in 1995 and her Ph.D. in computer science at Florida State University in 2001. Currently she is an assistant professor in the School of Business and Industry at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University where she teaches MIS/IT courses. Her research interests include wireless networks, MIS, high performance computing and collaborative technologies.

Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, Boston University, jtvh@bu.edu

Jennifer Teig von Hoffman is a pioneer of the Access Grid community, having organized one of the first AG conferences in 1999, founded the AG Documentation Project in 2001, and chaired the SC Global component of the 2003 Supercomputing Conference. Recently, she co-chaired the Access Grid Performance and Discussion Space at SIGGRAPH 2005, and conducted a series of site visits and trainings for members of the MSI Network through an NSF Small Grant for Experimental Research. She continues to be involved in Access Grid documentation, event planning, deployment, and documentation.