Diverse teams are now generally accepted as a ‘good idea’. However, a common refrain during discussions on improving diversity focuses on the lack of women applying for jobs. This session will address improving recruitment practices to reach more candidates from underrepresented groups. And will presentations from a panel of experts, followed by discussions on how to address the concerns of attendees, providing clearly defined steps for improving the recruitment process. This session invites participation from everyone in the HPC community, to help us gather knowledge from across the HPC workforce and provide clear guidance for steps to recruitment success.
Speakers:
Jessica Popp, DDN
Industry view of Tech Female Recruitment and Retention
Jessica Popp is the General Manger for the Infinite Memory Engine (IME) division at Data Direct Networks (DDN). Her division is responsible for the development and support of the IME Burst Buffer product for HPC. Prior to joining DDN, Jessica was the Director of Engineering for the High Performance Data Division at Intel, responsible for the development and support of the Lustre parallel file system. Jessica’s career, spanning more than 20 years has been focused on software development. She started as an application programmer in industry, moved to data warehousing before big data was even a ‘thing’, and then found herself in HPC ten years ago somewhat accidentally as she followed her passion for leading software teams. Having spent much of her career being the only, or one of a very few women on a team, she is excited to see and be a champion for the increased focus on diversity in engineering.
Lorna Rivera, Georgia Tech
Lorna Rivera serves as a Research Scientist II in Program Evaluation at the Georgia Tech Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC). Her work focuses on the intersection of scientific content, pedagogy, and equity with the goal of being both methodologically innovative and socially responsible. Rivera has conducted evaluations primarily funded by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. This has led her to work with over 18 universities as well as multiple international high performance computing centers and organizations such as Compute Canada, EPCC, NCSA, PRACE, RIKEN, and XSEDE. Rivera received both her Bachelor of Science in Health Education and her Master of Science in Health Education and Behavior from the University of Florida. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Rivera worked with various institutions, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, March of Dimes, Shands HealthCare, and the University of Florida College of Medicine. Her research interests include the evaluation of innovative programs and their sustainability.
AJ Lauer, NCAR
AJ Lauer is the group head for the Outreach Services Group in the Computational & Information Sciences Laboratory (CISL) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). She also serves as the Diversity, Education, and Outreach Specialist for CISL. Her group manages various HPC education and outreach activities including the Summer Internships in Parallel Computational Sciences (SIParCS) program, which has a goal of increasing the quality and diversity of the workforce needed to operate 21st century supercomputers. In her role as DEO specialist AJ co-facilitates the UCAR|NCAR Equity and Inclusion class, and advises CISL and NCAR on best practices for increasing diversity and inclusion within the organization. AJ received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin and her Masters of Science in Higher Education Administration from Florida International University. She is currently enrolled in Creighton University’s Interdisciplinary Leadership Ed.D. program. Prior to joining NCAR AJ worked in the university setting at Miami Dade College, the University of Illinois, and the Colorado School of Mines.