Women in science session: From the Top Secret Rosies to women in HPC

Abstract: The contributions of women in science in general, and in computer science in particular, have been invisibilised throughout history. In recent years, many actions have focused on bringing these women out of anonymity. In this session, the three speakers will present the most relevant contributions of women from the "Top secret rosies" (the programmers of the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, ENIAC) to the present day, with special emphasis on the field of HPC.

We will also learn about some of the actions and entities that are currently underway to increase the presence of women in the sector and to promote the professional careers of those who are already there. Some examples are the Barcelona ACM-W chapter, the Women in HPC chapter and the BioInfo4women of BSC.

Speakers:

Dr. Núria Castell Ariño.Dr. Núria Castell Ariño. Retired Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech. She holds a bachelor-master degree (UAB) and a PhD (UPC) in Computing Engineering. She has been Vice-Dean for International Relations at the FIB (2004-2010) and Dean of the FIB (2010-2017). Co-founder of the Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Center (IDEAI). Her field of research is Natural Language Processing. She has published articles in conferences, journals and books, mainly related to the natural language processing and some others on topics related to education. She currently continues to collaborate in lifelong education programs with the UPC School.
She is actively involved in gender equality issues, and especially in actions to increase the presence of women in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Actions, both local and international. She is a founding member of several women’s gender commissions at Catalan and Spanish level. Since 2018, she is a member of the WomENcourage Steering Committee, conference organized annually by the ACM-WE (ACM Women’s committee in Europe), and she is currently chairing the committee.
Recent awards: honorary mention of the Creu Casas award “Women for changing the world”, IEC in 2020, the UPC award for Social Commitment in the field of gender equality in 2020 (individual) and in 2021 (collective), the Salvà i Campillo Award for Outstanding Personality of LaNit 2021, the Mention M. Encarna Sanahuja Yll (collective) of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 2021, and the Ada Byron award of the Colexio Profesional de Enxeñaría en Informática de Galicia (2022).

 

Marta Garcia-Gasulla. Activity leader at the Computer Science department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), which she joined in 2006. She obtained her PhD in Computer Architecture from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) in 2017. Her research interest includes load balancing, parallel programming models, performance analysis, and optimization.

Currently, she co-leads the BSC's Best Practices for Performance and Productivity (BePPP) activity group. With BePPP, she aims to bridge the gap between scientific domain researchers and computer scientists researchers. Promoting best practices for programmers to productively (re)structure their codes in ways that can result in high efficiency and portability. She also captures the fundamental co-design input to be forwarded to the appropriate system software or architecture team to target their developments in the most helpful direction. This goal is materialized through collaborations with standardizing bodies, like the OpenMP language committee or European flagship projects like the European Processor Initiative and several European HPC Centers of Excellence.

 

María José Rementería. Currently the leader of the Social Link Analytics unit of the life sciences department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). She holds a degree in Physical Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid. She began her professional career in industry, where she worked for large technology firms such as EADS-CASA (now Airbus Group), Telefónica, and the European Space Agency (ESA).
During her time at Telefónica, she led and managed the industrial projects department and later worked in the Organization and Information Systems Department of Telefónica Corp., where she was in charge of implementing and deploying IT business management systems. Her last position at Telefonica was as CIO of Telefónica Foundation, where she manages the development and implementation of Data Centers in the 14 countries where Telefonica Foundation operates.
She is currently developing her career in scientific research at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, where she directs the "Social Link Analytics" unit and leads the Bioinfo4Women (B4W) programme of the Life Sciences department, which promotes women in Computational Biology and also researches biases in sex and gender in Health and Artificial Intelligence. She participated in the development of the BSC's "Gender Equality Plan," as well as the gender strategy for Attracting and Retaining female talent. She is one of the founding members of the Women in Aerospace Europe Madrid Local Group (WIA-Europe LG Madrid) (may 2021-).
She also is part of the working group of the Women, Science, and Innovation Observatory (OMCI) of the Ministry of Science and Innovation.