The 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference is the seventh in a series of conferences devoted to engaging a diverse community of researchers, educators, scholars, and students in discussions about opportunities and challenges in disciplines involving computer science. The conference, held in Washington, DC, Feb 7-10, 2013, has keynote speeches from leaders in computer science from across academia, government and industry, including ACM President and Google Vice President, Vint Cerf. This year the conference features a Cyber Security Education Track to raise awareness cyber security and increase participation in the development of the cyber workforce. This award supports eight (8) student scholarships, providing opportunities to these students, who might not otherwise be able to attend and participate in the conference.
The 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference was held in Washington, DC. It was the 12th annual conference of the series that had 550 participants made up of students, academics, and computing professionals that attended the three-day conference. The annual conference is one of the most diverse conferences in the computing community. The 2013 Richard Tapia conference had an attendee based made up of 51 percent female attendees, Blacks and African Americans made up 43 percent, Hispanics and Latinos constituted 26 percent and Caucasians comprised 19 percent. Students, from freshman to Ph.D. candidates, made up 60 percent of all attendees. For 69 percent of those attending, this was their first time at the Tapia conference, and for many of them it was their first professional conference. The conference reached another attendance record as it seems to grow every year. The conference program included plenary speakers, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, birds-of-a-feather meetings, professional networking and hundreds of informal conversations in the hallways and over meals. The conference this year proposed to incorporate a focused Cyber Security Education track to raise awareness and interest about Cyber Security among conference attendees with the long term mission to broaden the pool of individuals entering the Cyber Security workforce. The Tapia Conference partnered with NSF's Cyber Security Directorate to receive $10,000 from NSF's Cyber Security Education program to raise awareness to participants about Cyber Security. Through the grant, the conference utilized the funds to provide travel support for underrepresented undergraduate and graduate computer science students at the 2014 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference. The Cyber Security Education Track at Tapia 2013 included the following sessions: Plenary Talk on Cyber Security, Designing Software Systems that Comply with Privacy and Security Regulations Panel, Introduction to Cyber Security Panel, Network Security Cryptography Security, Trust, and Privacy: Perspectives Across the Academic Pipeline Plenary Ken Kennedy Distinguished Lecture, Cyber Security – the Weak Link in our Infrastructures There was even a Cyber Security Challenge. The funding supported 9 students, 6 african american males, 3 latino students, 2 female and 7 males. Seven of the students came from a Minority Serving Institution. All of students participated fully in the conference. Three of the students funded won awards for their participation. One student was a poster research award winner. That same student along with two others were part of a group that won the Extreme Cryptography Challenge. This funding support provided by NSF was truly appreciated as these students would have likely not received the opportunity to participant in the conference. The Tapia conference has a tradition of providing a supportive networking environment for under-represented groups across the broad range of computing and information technology, from science to business to the arts to infrastructure. The Tapia conference is organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery, and in cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society and the Computing Research Association. The Tapia conference honors the significant contributions of Richard A. Tapia, a mathematician and professor in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and a national leader in education and outreach programs. The Tapia Conferences brings together people in CS&E from all educational levels, backgrounds and ethnicities to celebrate and support the accomplishments of this diverse community.
