Communications of the ACM
Scholarships Will Enable Women Students to Attend Computing Conferences
Wipro Technologies and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) announced an agreement Tuesday (June 29) wherein Wipro will fund scholarships that enable women students majoring in computer science and related programs to attend research conferences around the world.
The scholarship support is an initiative under Wipro's focus to encourage diversity. The funds by Wipro Technologies will expand a program currently administered by the ACM Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W) to help women in the computing field attend conferences over the next five years beginning in 2011. The scholarship support fosters opportunities for women to contribute towards innovation and advanced learning. It also enables ACM-W to offer larger scholarships to qualified recipients.
"We believe that an organization's ability to embrace and imbibe diversity within its DNA deeply influences its competitiveness and success. Diversity holds many benefits, key among them being building a global, dynamic & healthy work environment and encouraging individual talents to flourish in the society. We are pleased to sponsor this ACM-W Scholarship Program, and in general to bring more women into science and technology, and to create better real-world solutions to complex issues that make a difference in improving living standards around the globe," says I.Vijayakumar, chief technology officer at Wipro Technologies.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, President of ACM, says, "Wipro's generous offer to raise the funding for this critical program means ACM will be able to expand its efforts to attract the best minds to the computing field across the demographic spectrum—especially among underrepresented groups." She adds that exposure to the computing research world can be an important factor in encouraging students to continue their studies. "Their advanced education will also qualify more women for a range of attractive industry and academic positions in this dynamic field that has contributed so much to inspire advances that benefit society."
The financial support from Wipro allows ACM-W to offer larger scholarships than in previous years, and to enable participation by women in both international and local events. Scholarship applications are evaluated at six points throughout the year in order to distribute awards across a range of conferences. Approximately 20 recipients will be identified as ACM-W/Wipro Scholars each year, with individual funds ranging from $600 to $1,200, depending on distance to conference venues. The ACM-W/Wipro Scholars will also submit a report of their conference experience, which will be posted on the ACM-W webpage as part of the "In Her Own Words" section to capture the impact of this opportunity on their career choice.
Information on application and notification dates and conference details is available at http://women.acm.org/participate/scholarship/index.cfm.
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