2017 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference Announces Keynote Speakers

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, June 28, 2017 -- Today, CMD-IT announced keynote speakers for the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference.   Themed “Diversity: Simply Smarter,” the Tapia Conference will be held September 20-23 in Atlanta Georgia.  The Tapia Conference is the premier venue to bring together students, faculty, researchers and professionals from all backgrounds and ethnicities in computing to promote and celebrate diversity in computing.  The Tapia Conference is sponsored by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and presented by the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT).

Keynote speakers at the Tapia Conference are a highly diverse group and provide both learning and inspiration to the attendees.  The 2017 Tapia Conference features the following keynote speakers:

•  Edward Castillo, Research Scientist, Radiation Oncology Department, Beaumont Health Research Institute, will be presenting Making a Mathematical Diagnosis: How Combining Medical Imaging with Computational Science can Improve Patient Outcomes.
•  Adrienne P. Felt, Google, Chrome Metrics and Usable Security Team, will present Building a Browser for Everyone
•  James Mickens, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University, will present Leveraging Fine-grained Data Flows in Web Applications.
•  Oyekunle Olukotun, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Stanford University, will present Making Parallelism Easy: A 25 Year Odyssey.
•  Avani Wildani, Assistant Professor, MathCS and Neuroscience, Emory University, will present New Interfaces in Neural Computing.

The Tapia Conference will feature panels and workshops, birds of a feather sessions, a career fair and a Poster Reception featuring graduate and undergraduate student posters. 

The Tapia Celebration banquet will feature guest speaker Randal Pinkett, Founder, Chairman and CEO, BCT Partners.  Dr. Pinkett has received numerous awards for business and technology excellence including the Information Technology Senior Management Forum’s Beacon Award, the National Society of Black Engineers’ Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and the National Urban League’s Business Excellence Award. Dr. Pinkett was the first and only African-American to receive the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship at Rutgers University. He was also the winner of NBC’s hit reality television show, The Apprentice, having been selected as one of 18 candidates chosen from among 1 million applicants to compete for this opportunity.

The Tapia conference sponsors include Platinum Sponsors Cornell Computing and Information Science, Cornell Tech, Georgia Tech, Microsoft, Mozilla, Stanford Engineering, and UC Berkeley. Platinum Government Supporters include the National Science Foundation, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.  Gold Sponsors include Anita Borg Institute, GE Digital, GE Healthcare, IBM, Kennesaw State University, Lyft, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Northrup Grumman, Square, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and Virginia Tech.

For more information and to register for the Tapia Conference, visit www.tapiaconference.org.  

About CMD-IT

The vision of CMD-IT is to contribute to the national need for an effective workforce in computing and IT through inclusive programs and initiatives focused on minorities and people with disabilities. CMD-IT’s vision is accomplished through its mission to insure that underrepresented groups are fully engaged in computing and IT, and promotes innovation that enriches, enhances and enables underrepresented communities. For more information, please visit www.cmd-it.org.

Media Contact: Jerri Barrett, [email protected], 408-204-7229