As our Girls Code Jam is coming up on March 29th at Girls Inc. of San Antonio, we wanted to highlight some of the women who have made big contributions in the world of computer science. There are a multitude of women who have put their stamp on the computer science world and just don’t get a ton of credit or acknowledgement as some of their male counterparts. We’re here to turn that narrative and remind everyone of just how far we have come because of women in computer science.
Radia Joy Pearlman
Radia Pearlman is an American computer programmer and network engineer. She played a major role in assembling the networks and technology to enable what we now know call the internet. She got her nickname, “Mother of the Internet” because of her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is essential to the operation of network bridges. In more recent years, Pearlman has invented the TRILL protocol to correct some of the shortcomings of spanning trees. This allows the Ethernet to make optimal use of bandwidth.
Annie Easley
Annie Easley was an African American computer scientist and mathematician who made very important contributions to NASA's rocket systems and energy technologies. In her early work days, Easley ran simulations at NASA's Plum Brook Reactor Facility and studied the effects of rocket launches on earth's ozone layer. To help her with these simulations, Easley taught herself programming using languages, such as Fortran and SOAP. She also went on to work developing code used in researching and analyzing alternative power technologies like batteries and fuel systems. Her research would later be used in hybrid vehicles and NASA's Centaur upper-stage rocket.
Fei-Fei Li
Fei-Fei Li is a Chinese-American computer scientist who is best known for her efforts in establishing ImageNet, which is the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s. Li serves as both the co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. Li co-founded AI4ALL, a nonprofit organization working to increase diversity and inclusion in the field of artificial intelligence. She has also done a ton of research in the fields of inartificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and cognitive neuroscience.
Anita Borg
Anita Borg was a celebrated American computer scientist who advocated for women’s representation and professional advancement in technology. Borg originally didn’t intend to go into computer science, yet she taught herself how to program while working at a small insurance company. In 1981, Borg was awarded a PhD in Computer Science by New York University for her research investigating the synchronization efficiency of operating systems supervised by Robert Dewar and Gerald Belpaire. During her career, she founded the Institute for Women and Technology and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
Cecilia R. Aragon
Cecilia Aragon is an American computer scientist, professor, author, and champion aerobatic pilot who’s most notable work is being the co-inventor of the treap data structure, which is a type of binary search tree that orders nodes by adding a priority as well as a key to each node. Aragon received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers (PECASE) for her work in data-intensive science and visual analytics of very large data sets. Alongside her work, Araong found comfort in flying planes and eventually became the first Latina in the United States Aerobatic Team.
These are just a few women who have made great contributions to the world of Computer Science. Learn more about other women in computer science and try your hand at it at our Girls Code Jam this year!