Reinventing Tech for the Next Generation—she++ and Microsoft Research

Learn what Microsoft Research, in partnership with she++, is doing to change the face of computer science by bringing more women into the field. This on-demand video of the event, “Reinventing Tech for the Next Generation,” includes the she++ documentary and question-and-answer sessions with our two panels. The first panel consists of highly motivated and inspiring female interns who are making a difference in their local communities by growing the next generation of computer scientists. The second includes top technical women from Microsoft who are driving innovation and change across the company. Share in the inspiration and enthusiasm for growing the numbers of women in computer science and learn what you can do to help the cause.

Speaker Details

Katie Doran is a Program Manager working on the future of technology on the Analog team at Microsoft. Katie has previously interned at Microsoft Research and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and was a Graduate Student Researcher Fellow at NASA Headquarter; she has both her undergraduate and master’s degrees are in Computer Science and leverages this technical skill to strengthen communities through outreach and volunteering. Her work to grow the numbers of women and minorities participating in STEM has included an after school Game Design and Development apprenticeship which ran for over 4 years in Charlotte, NC as well as multiple trips to teach students and teachers in rural, northern Haiti about technology and computational thinking.

Amy Lin, is a SDE Intern on the Services Engineering Team this summer, and a rising senior at UCLA studying Computer Science. She has served as the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at UCLA’s Major Chair, Mentorship Director, and External Vice President. Amy was one of the 10 collegiate representatives chosen at the Society level to undergo leadership training (SWE Future Leader). She hosted numerous events including 3 company tours, 19 company information sessions and workshops, an etiquette dinner, and an alumni networking dinner. She currently serves as their President. As the UCLA Engineering Mentorship (MentorSEAS) Program and Committee Director last year, Amy spearheaded the effort to provide every new engineering student with at least one upperclassman student mentor of the same major (728 freshmen and transfers with 208 mentors). She also connected all students with a network and database of mentors, events, workshops, and resources. Amy spent Summer 2012 at Microsoft as an Explorer Intern. As an intern this summer, she organized an Intern Agile Immersion Day to expose a team of interns to a FTE team working in an open-space agile environment. She aims to expose girls to accessible, understandable forms of technology and to improve retention of engineering majors.

Priya Ganesan is a high school intern on the Microsoft Research Machine Translation team this summer, working on a Windows 8 application that utilizes machine translation and music synthesizing features to translate songs into different languages. She just graduated from high school and will be attending Stanford University this fall, majoring in Computer Science. Priya is a recipient of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) Award for Aspirations in Computing, which recognizes high school girls for their interest in computer science. Priya is also a main organizer and co-founder of the annual youth conference TEDxRedmond (sponsored by Microsoft), which inspires students to solve today’s problems and make a difference in their communities. Last summer, Priya was a research intern at Stanford’s Falk Center for Cardiovascular Research and conducted an independent research project on the application of adipose stem cells in regenerative cardiovascular therapy. The previous summer, Priya traveled to Rwanda for three weeks to work with underprivileged girls in rural Nyamata, teaching them English and empowering them to pursue their education despite their daily hardships. After witnessing the abject poverty in Rwanda and seeing the impact that technology can make in alleviating poverty and improving quality of life, Priya hopes to use computer science to make a difference in the lives of those in third-world countries.

Kathryn S. McKinley is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. She likes to solve programming language implementation problems and make systems faster, more reliable, secure, and energy efficient. McKinley and her collaborators produced the widely used DaCapo Java Benchmarks, TRIPS Compiler, Hoard memory manager, MMTk garbage collector toolkit, and the Immix garbage collector. She is co-chair of the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research, and has testified on the issue of information technology innovation to the U.S. House Science Committee. McKinley has graduated 17 Ph.D. students. She is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow.

As a Partner Group Program Manager in the Windows Server and System Center Division, Erin Chapple leads the CloudOS Infrastructure team, which delivers the core platform and administrative experiences that are necessary to minimize the cost and effort to deploy, manage, and operate the CloudOS. The team also contributes to industry standards and drives their adoption in support of the software-defined data center. Since joining Microsoft in 1998, Erin has held roles focused on delivering solutions for IT. She holds a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MS in applied behavioral science from the Leadership Institute of Seattle. In 2007, she received a UW 50th Anniversary Alumni Award for her work supporting women in technology. In 2012, Erin’s peers at Microsoft presented her with the Leadership Advocacy Award for Women. Erin was recognized as one of ten “Microsoft Woman Worth Watching” on Mary-Jo Foley’s ZDNet Blog. In her spare time, she enjoys anything to do with music, good food, and friends.

Cordy Rierson is a 20 year entertainment industry veteran. She’s worked in film, television, music videos, and commercials in live action, visual effects and post production on projects such as Forces of Nature, Independence Day, Batman Forever, Clear & Present Danger, Broken Arrow and Mission Impossible. She has spent the last 10 years in interactive entertainment, developing dozens of titles for Xbox, Xbox 360, PC, PS2, PS3, PSP and Wii such as Front Mission: Evolved, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Kinect Fun Labs. Cordy is currently a Studio Manager for Microsoft Studios. Cordy is a graduate of University of Central Florida and Full Sail University where she studied communication, film, video, radio & TV. Cordy is a 2009 inaugural Hall of Fame Inductee for Full Sail University for outstanding contributions and achievements in the entertainment industry and has been honored with a Congressional Recognition Award for dynamic digital visual effects in the film industry. She is also on the Board of Directors for the International Game Developers Association.

Shilpa Ranganathan, is a Senior Test Lead at Microsoft. She has worked in the Unified Communications space for nine years and helped ship multiple versions of Microsoft Live Meeting and Microsoft Lync during her career at Microsoft. She is passionate about working on innovative techniques to improve software testing and helping create and ship high quality products. Shilpa has represented Microsoft at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in growing women in STEM. In addition, she was co-founder of Bytewise organization formed in 2011 by women on the Lync Test team with the purpose of establishing a culture that encourages women in software engineering. In her free time she wrote a Think Week paper on “Trust and Gender Differences.” Shilpa has a bachelors and masters degree in Chemical engineering and is presently focused on improving the test process through automation, new testing tools and techniques.

Date:
Speakers:
Amy Lin, Ayna Agarwal, Cordy Rierson, Erin Chapple, Kathryn McKinley, Katie Doran, Priya Ganesan, Rane Johnson, and Shilpa Ranganathan
Affiliation:
Microsoft Research, Stanford University, MSR, UCLA, Graduate International Community School, Microsoft, Platform Next, Skype
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