2018 Winners

ACM’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC), in collaboration with Intel, has announced the 7 recipients of the ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational and Data Science Fellowships for 2018. The fellowship is funded by Intel and is presented each year at the annual SC conference.

The fellowship was established as a five-year program to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the computing field. The fellowship provides $15,000 annually for study anywhere in the world.

Students were nominated by their graduate advisors. Nominees spanned disciplines from genetics and geography to engineering and mathematics, and represented large, mid-sized, and small institutions in 32 countries. More than 80% of nominees were female, and more than 40% were identified as an underrepresented minority in their country of study. This year saw record numbers of applicants outside North America who identify as part of an underrepresented group in their country of study.

The nominations were evaluated and ranked by a panel of experts (who were themselves diverse with respect to race, gender, discipline, and nationality) based on nominees’ overall potential for excellence in data science and/or computational science, and the extent to which they will serve as leaders and role models to increase diversity in the workplace.

Of the 7 students named as winners this year, six are women and all are underrepresented minorities in their country of study. They are pursuing MS and PhD degrees in a variety of applied fields:

• Ana Belen Barcenas Jimenez (MS, Interdisciplinary Data Science), Duke University

• Riza Bautista (Ph.D., Bioinformatics & System Biology), University of Delaware

• Teresa Bergazin (Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Sciences), University of California at Irvine

• Kiante Brantley (Ph.D., Computer Science), University of Maryland

• Meagan (Reagan) Cronin (Ph.D., Computer Science), University of Colorado at Boulder

• Nana-Ama Bridget Gana (MS, Statistics), Kwame Nkrumah University

• Anne Marsden (Ph.D., Computer Science), Stanford University

Funding will be awarded in August. The winners will receive travel support to attend SC18 in Dallas, Texas (USA), where they will be recognized during the awards ceremony. They will also receive a complimentary membership in SIGHPC for the duration of their fellowship.