HOUSTON -- Education Outreach and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (EOT-PACI) co-chairman Richard Tapia was honored for his significant contributions during a three-day symposium that will celebrate the technical contributions and career interests of diverse people in computing fields.

The Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing 2001 symposium, the first in a series of related events, took place October 18-20, 2001 at the Sofitel Hotel in Houston, Texas.

The theme of this year's symposium, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery, was "Expanding Horizons," which focuses on access to powerful knowledge from diverse researchers in computing, community expansion in the field of computing, and knowledge sharing among computing professions.

Dr. Richard A. Tapia is a mathematician and professor in computational and applied mathematics at Rice University in Houston. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and member of the National Science Board.

Dr. Tapia was the first to receive the A. Nico Habermann Award from the Computing Research Association for outstanding contributions to aiding members of underrepresented groups within the computing community.

President Clinton presented Dr. Tapia with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.

The symposium included a banquet honoring Richard Tapia. In addition to a full slate of speakers and panels, a town hall meeting took place to organize future events and a Career Info Center will display materials about internships, job openings, and other information from sponsors and supporting organizations.

"The speakers for the Tapia Symposium are outstanding," said Valerie Taylor, Tapia 2001 Symposium co-chair.

In addition to Richard Tapia's keynote address, participants also heard from Jackie McNabb, KDH Sciences on "Breaking through Barriers: A Journey to Success," Ken Kennedy of Rice University on "Software Support for High Performance Problem Solving on the GRID," Barbara Simons of IBM Research (retired) on "Surveillance of Electronic Communication by Law Enforcement," Juan Meza of Sandia National Laboratories, on "Parallel Optimization Methods for Simulation-based Problems," David Nealey of EI Technologies on "Geographic Information Systems," and several others.

According to Taylor, panels focussed on mentoring, student experiences in graduate school, and other career-based issues.

"We're particularly pleased with the focus on student participation," said Richard Alo of the University of Houston-Downtown, and a co-chair of Taylor's.

"We're seeking significant support for students to attend the conference, and are encouraging students to submit posters," Aló said before the meeting." There will be awards for the best overall poster of the symposium, and the best poster with a student as the primary author."

Poster presentations will describe research results and experiences related to computational science, computer engineering, and computer science.

The Tapia 2001 Symposium also offered a scholarship program to help students and faculty that can not afford to attend this event.

The Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing was organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing (www.npaci.edu/Outreach/CDC), an EOT-PACI partner. CDC helps increase the visibility of people of color in computing research and provides networking opportunities for minority researchers, faculty, and students.

CDC is a joint committee of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Computing Research Association (CRA). For more information on CDC, see http://www.npaci.edu/Outreach/CDC. EOT-PACI (http://www.eot.org) is a joint program of the National Computational Science Alliance (http://alliance.ncsa.uiuc.edu) and the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (http://www.npaci.edu).

For more information about the entire symposium, please visit www.sdsc.edu/Tapia2001

—Jason Kolnos