Anita Borg Institute Honors Three "Women of Vision"

Business Wire, April 9, 2007

Prominent Women in Technology to Receive Awards at Gala Event May 3rd, 2007

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) will honor this year's recipients of their annual Women of Vision Awards at a gala reception and dinner for more than 700 attendees to be held on the evening of May 3rd, 2007 at San Jose's Fairmont Hotel. Three prominent individuals - Deborah Estrin, University of California Los Angeles; Leah H. Jamieson, Purdue University; and Duy-Loan Le, Texas Instruments - will be honored for their accomplishments and contributions as women in technology in the categories of Innovation, Social Impact and Leadership, respectively.

The event will feature keynote speaker Esther Dyson, leading authority on emerging digital technology & named one of the most powerful women by Fortune magazine's "American business" and Sydnie Kohara, KPIX CBS channel 5 Eyewitness News, as master of ceremonies.

Event sponsors include Juniper Networks (Gold), Cisco Systems, Symantec, and CBS 5 (Silver) and Google, HP and Xilinx (Bronze).

ABI President Dr. Telle Whitney said, "Understanding that the United States faces critical global competitive challenges in technology leadership and innovation, ABI established the Women of Vision Awards to highlight, recognize and celebrate the achievements of women revolutionizing technology. Our three recipients exemplify a woman's individual capacity to excel at following her own vision, while making contributions that ensure a better future for all of us."

The three Women of Vision Award winners were selected from a field of more than 60 nominees, all of whom are women engaged in technology professions in industry, academia or government. Candidates for the Award are considered based on their records for (1) consistent, significant contributions to technology invention and application; (2) effecting positive changes in the ways in which technology impacts society; and (3) demonstrated leadership in the technology industry.

Selected in the category for Innovation is Deborah Estrin, Ph.D. Professor of Computer Science at UCLA, for her sustained and significant founding research in network interconnection and simulation, embedded networking, sensornet research, and security. Her research focuses on the design of network and routing protocols for very large, global, networks, such as: scalable multicast routing and transport protocols, self-configuring protocol mechanisms for scalability and robustness, and tools and methods for designing and studying large scale networks. Since the late 90's Professor Estrin has been collaborating with colleagues and students to develop protocols and systems architectures needed to realize rapidly-deployable and robustly-operating networks of physically-embedded devices.

Purdue University Dean of Engineering, Dr. Leah H. Jamieson is the 2007 Social Impact Women of Vision Award recipient. Dr. Jamieson is recognized for her work at the forefront of innovations in the education and social change as a co-founder and past director of the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program. EPICS is a service learning, multi-disciplinary engineering design program. For more than a decade EPICS has enabled students (and advisors) with different expertise to provide technical solutions to real social problems in their local communities, at Purdue, and at Universities throughout America and Internationally.

For Leadership, the Women of Vision Award recognizes Duy-Loan Le, Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments and TI Program Manager for Laplace (a DSP chip for 3G base stations) and Manager of DSP Advanced Ramp. Duy-Loan has been breaking barriers and leading by example since she came to America in 1975 with her mother and 8 siblings. Duy-Loan graduated high school as Valedictorian at 16 and then completing her BSEE with honors three years later. At 19 she began her career at TI as a memory design engineer. She has lead successful teams throughout her career completing projects that have made a significant impact on the field of science/technology. In 2002, she became the first woman elected as a Senior Fellow and is one of only six employees to hold that title at Texas Instruments.

"This year's winners embody what is best in our community, our nation and our world," added ABI's Whitney. "Women, individually and collectively, have the power to improve our world and change the face of technology. These women are using that power in ways that have earned them a rightful place as role models for the next generation. They are truly "Women of Vision," and we are proud to honor them."

For more information: http://anitaborg.org/womenofvision/

About the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI):

In an increasingly competitive global marketplace the Anita Borg Institute provides resources and programs for industry, academia and government to help them recruit, retain and develop women leaders in high tech fields resulting in higher levels of technology innovation. ABI programs serve high-tech women creating a community and providing tools to develop their careers. The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) charitable organization. ABI Partners: Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Google, IBM, Intel, Cisco and Juniper Networks www.anitaborg.org.