HU’s Dr. Syeda Saleha Raza will attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing – the world’s largest gathering of women technologists
HABIB UNIVERSITY: One of Habib University’s computer science professors has been shortlisted to attend The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women (GHC 2016) conference scheduled to be held this October in Houston, Texas. The conference is the world’s largest gathering of women in computing and technology and is sponsored by more than 300 major technology companies, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel and IBM.
Dr. Saleha Raza, who teaches Computer Science at Habib University, will be representing the growing community of women technologists in Pakistan. Her participation in the conference is a major achievement for HU, which has been encouraging women to increase participation in science and engineering through various initiatives.
Dr. Raza has been involved in cutting edge research in the field of artificial intelligence. In the past, she was the technical lead of KarachiKoalas, a simulated robot soccer team that was established in Fall 2010. In her capacity, she oversaw the team’s progress from the top 16 (in RoboCup 2011 – Turkey) to the top 10 (in RoboCup 2012 – Mexico) and, finally, to the top five (RoboCup 2013 – Netherlands).
Explaining the selection process, Dr. Raza said that she had highlighted her experience of around 15 years in the field of Computer Science in her application. Being an awardee of the Endeavour Research Fellowship and an intern at Microsoft Research further strengthened her application. She also mentioned WiCSE (Women in Computer Science and Engineering), a society formed at Habib University with an aim to promote Pakistani women in science and engineering.
“The purpose of attending this conference is to get inspiration from other female researchers and technologists around the world and learn from their experiences,” Dr. Raza said while speaking of her reasons to attend GHC 2016. “This will be a great opportunity to network with other women in computing and develop some fruitful relationships,” she added.
Dr. Saleha is particularly excited to attend faculty-oriented sessions organized at GHC. Besides that, she also plans to attend and participate in artificial intelligence and open source sessions.
GHC 2015 had hosted almost 12,000 attendees from 63 countries, with over 1,300 companies present to be part of the global event. The event organizers expect participation to grow to 15,000 attendees this year.
