September 26, 2008 - Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) conference will be held at the Keystone Resort, Colorado, October 1-4, 2008. Thirty four Sun employees are attending the conference this year, presenting in 12 panels or talks. Sun is a Platinum Sponsor of GHC 2008.

Sun's GHC 2008 attendees are led by Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos who will participate in the CTO Plenary Session - Leading Technology: A View From the Top. Other sessions with Sun panelists and presenters include:

• Innovating with Chip Multi-Threading Technology
• Mid-Career Course Correction
• The Synergistic Evolution of Software & Hardware Technologies
• Build a Better Processor: Breaking through the Technology Challenges
• Taking the Long View - Many Careers in One Company
• Letting the Cup Overflow: Expanding Your Experiences Outside Your Research Lab
• Project Fortress: A Multicore Language for Scientists and Engineers
• Women in the Brave New World of Free and Open Source Software
• Web 2.0 Session: Online Social Networks - Impact to Our Careers
• Experiences with Maternity Leave and Returning to Work

Women Ph.D. Students Win Scholarships to Grace Hopper Conference

In recognition of the first hardware track for the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Conference, the VLSI Group at Sun Labs has awarded conference scholarships to two women students interested in hardware development. The students are Laura Grupp, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego, and Geri Lamble, a Ph.D. student at Santa Clara University. The scholarships, up to US $1500 each, will cover travel and registration for these two women students to attend GHC 2008.

Laura Grupp

Laura Grupp graduated from the University of Washington in June 2007 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (Magna cum Laude). Her undergraduate courses included Circuit Theory, Microcomputer Systems, Digital Circuits and Systems, and Computer Design and Organization. During her first Ph.D. year, she focused on Computer Architecture and specifically on the intricacies of Flash Translation Layers which are used as the interface to flash memory and hold the key to exploiting flash's unique idiosyncrasies.

Geri Lamble

Geri Lamble completed a Master of Science in Computer Engineering in 1996 at Santa Clara University, and her graduate focus is on Computer Engineering. For the IASTED Int'l Conf on Modeling and Simulation in May, 1999, she co-authored a paper, "Mapping a Parallel Bit-Level Matrix Multiplication Algorithm to FPGA Chips," with her advisor, Dr. Weijia Shang. Geri's career in the computer industry includes extensive experience in release and test engineering. She worked at Sun from 1987-88 as a software systems engineer and project lead of the Release Engineering group in the Sun Federal computer systems division.

Sun is the first company to provide scholarships for women in hardware at the Grace Hopper Conference and these scholarships underscore Sun's promotion and support for computer hardware research. The hardware track will feature such diverse topics as "Using Commercial Hardware in Space Computing Platforms" and "Innovating with Chip Multithreading Technologies."

About the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Conference:

Co-founded by Dr. Anita Borg and Dr. Telle Whitney in 1994 and inspired by the legacy of Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing Conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presented with the Association on Computing Machinery (ACM), the GHC career development. The world's largest gathering of technical women in computing, the GHC Conference has become a premier event for ABI sponsors to recruit new talent, promote their organization, and inspire their workforce.

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