Portland, Oregon, USA-Plenary speakers have been announced for the 2009 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, complimenting a full technical program that includes papers, papers, panels, workshops, posters, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, a Doctoral Consortium, and a Robotics Competition. The 2009 event, the fifth in the series, will take place April 1-4, 2009 at the Portland Oregon Marriott Downtown Waterfront.

Early bird registration, with discounted registration fees, closes on March 8, 2009. March 8 is also the date by which hotel reservations should be confirmed. Registration information can be found at http://tapiaconference.org/2009/travel.html.

According to the 2009 Tapia Celebration Chair Nina Berry of Sandia National Laboratories, the conference theme of "Intellect, Initiative, Insight, and Innovation" will be exhibited everywhere at the event, including through the involvement of the following innovators who will give the plenary talks:

--Dr. Hector Garcia-Molina, Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Dr. Garcia-Molina will give the Ken Kennedy Distinguished Lecture at the Tapia Celebration. The Kennedy lecture is a tribute to Rice University Professor Ken Kennedy, one of the world's foremost experts on high-performance computing who passed away last year.

--Dr. Ann Gates, Associate Vice President of Research, University of Texas at El Paso.

--Dr. Charles Isbell, Associate Dean, College of Computing, and Associate Professor, Laboratory for Interactive Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Systems Group, School of Interactive Computing College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology.

--Dr. Jane Margolis, Senior Researcher, Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and author of the recently published book, "Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing" (MIT Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Prose Award from the Association of American Publishers in the Education category.

--Mario Pipkin, General Manager, Enterprise Experience Division, Microsoft Corporation.

Join the presenters, supporters, and attendees from across the nation as they come together next month to celebrate diversity in computing with a strong foundation in research and education. For complete conference information, including a schedule and information on all the invited talks technical papers, panels and birds-of-a-feather sessions, see http://tapiaconference.org/2009/prog_sched.html.

About the Tapia Conference

The Tapia Celebration is organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC), and sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in cooperation with the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS). The CDC (http://www.cdc-computing.org/) is a joint organization of the ACM, CRA, and IEEE-CS.

The conference honors the significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, University Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

The Tapia 2009 Celebration is made possible by the financial support of a number of academic, research, and business organizations at several levels, including:

--Gold Supporters: Empowering Leadership Alliance, Rice-Houston Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate

--Silver Supporters: Georgia Tech College of Computing, Google, Microsoft, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Virginia Tech University

--Bronze Supporters: Georgetown University, Harvey Mudd College, IBM Corporation, Indiana University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of Notre Dame, Oregon State University, Tufts University

--Contributors: Anita Borg Institute, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, National Center for Women & Information Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin

Organizations interested in supporting the conference should write to funding@tapiaconference.org. Benefits for supporters at several levels are posted on the conference Website.