Our ongoing commitment to scholarly research and support of the advancement of female computer scientists was illuminated late last year among the fountains and sculptures of Florence, Italy, when two female computer science scholars were awarded travel grants to attend ACM Multimedia 2010 (ACM MM).
We had the opportunity to speak to Andreea Danielescu, a third year PhD student at Arizona State University, and Behnoosh Hariri, a PhD in a post-doc year at University of Ottawa. They were each already involved in the conference, but uncertain about where their travel funding would come from until they applied for a Google travel grant.
Reflecting on the experience, both women emphasized the importance of networking. Before she completed her PhD, Behnoosh thought that if she “focused on research and maintained an outstanding contribution that it was enough.” She soon realized, as she was looking into post-doc opportunities, that successful researchers need to know other people who work in the same field. “Research cannot be individual these days,” she said and added that conferences are a great opportunity to garner specific feedback on your work from some of the greatest minds in the field.
Andreea and Behnoosh met with Googlers from our Zurich office; Andreea’s general impression? Googlers are laid back, practical and have “interesting” points of view, “which is not a bad thing” she quickly added. “Googlers always ask, why is this applicable? How is this useful?”; she says these simple questions drive her research and are in line with her values as a scientist—something she was pleasantly surprised to see she had in common with Googlers.
Behnoosh was more inclined to see Google as a professional destination. She elaborated saying “my attitude was, if you wanted something really challenging that academia was the place.” But she now sees that you can still be “challenged as a software developer, doing something new and not routine.” Andreea echoed this sentiment: “Before the conference I had heard there weren’t too many research specific positions and I wasn’t sure if they [software engineers] have too much contact with researchers. The conference changed this perception and I now know that there are Googlers engaged in product-driven research.”
Posted by Kate Berrio & Vivian Fontillas
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