2021 Winners

ACM’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC) has announced the eleven recipients of the ACM SIGHPC Computational and Data Science Fellowships for 2021. Funded by SIGHPC, the fellowships are highly competitive, and are awarded after a rigorous merit review.

The program is intended to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women, as well as students from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the computing field. The fellowship provides $15,000 annually for study anywhere in the world.

"SIGHPC strongly supports a mission of inclusion in the HPC community. If we are to be successful in that mission we must broaden the range of perspectives and ideas that form the foundation of our field. It’s critical to focus on students at the early career stage and provide opportunities for them," says Stephen Lien Harrell, chair of the Fellowship program for 2021. “We are honored to be able to make these awards as an organization, and to continue to build a broader, more resilient, and welcoming community."

More than 200 students were nominated by their graduate advisors. Nominees spanned disciplines from mathematics and astrophysics to chemical engineering and agriculture, and represented large, mid-sized, and small institutions in countries around the world. More than 81% of nominees identified as female, and 84% identified as an underrepresented minority 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 the 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 eleven students named as winners this year, 73% identify as female, and 91% are underrepresented minorities in their country of study. They are pursuing MS and PhD degrees in a variety of applied fields:

·   Osahon Asowata (PhD, Biostatistics), College of Medicine, University of Ibadan

·   Somayeh Bakhtiari Ramezani (PhD, Computer Science), Mississippi State University

·   Kiana Burton (PhD, Astrophysics and Planetary Science), University of Colorado Boulder

·   Monique Hooley (MS, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering), University of California, Berkeley

·   Chinenye Ifebirinachi (PhD, Data Science & Analytics), North Carolina A&T State University

·   Daniela Markazi (PhD, Informatics), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

·   Ismael Mendoza (double PhD, Physics & Scientific Computing), University of Michigan

·   Lauren Oey (PhD, Psychology and Computational Social Science), University of California, San Diego

·   Ana-Arina Raileanu (MS, Data Science), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

·   Harry Reyes (PhD, Biomedical Informatics), Columbia University

·   Tanya Tafolla (PhD, Applied Mathematics), University of California, Merced

Funding will be awarded in August. The winners will be recognized during the awards ceremony at SC21. They will also receive a complimentary membership in SIGHPC for the duration of their fellowship.