Tag: diversity

**Article originally published on Nature.** Black and Hispanic people face huge hurdles at technology companies and in computer-science education in the United States, with far-reaching consequences for science and all of society. Juan Gilbert felt alone as he pursued a Ph.D. in computer science in the 1990s. It was a familiar sense that had followed […]

Gloria Katuka first saw a laptop when she was 12 years old, a moment she has never forgotten on her journey to becoming a computer scientist. Years later, Katuka has spent her time finding ways to bring computer science to K-12 students, even founding InTECHgrate, a nonprofit that provides after-school programs to bring computer science, […]

Chris Crawford, Ph.D., may have taken a different path in life had a storm not fried his computer. “It was literally a lightning strike that propelled me into computer science,” said Dr. Crawford (HCC Ph.D. ’17), an assistant professor at the University of Alabama Department of Computer Science. The computer was a gift from his […]

Growing up in Gainesville, FL, Rhonda Holt, the senior vice president of information technology at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), assumed she would be pursuing aerospace as a profession. The space program was gearing up in Florida, and like many people, she had grown up watching space shuttle take-offs. But, after graduating from high school […]

The University of Florida Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) is proud to announce the graduation of Brianna Posadas, Ph.D., the first Latina to earn a doctoral degree from the department. Dr. Posadas, who wants to pursue agricultural technology policy and usability in agricultural engineering design, passed her dissertation defense in April […]

Dr. Juan Gilbert’s father did not complete high school, but he fought in the Korean war and was born and raised in Pulaski, Tennessee—the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. “He was there when it happened,” Gilbert says, referring to the time when the KKK held demonstrations and violently upheld segregation in the 1950s and […]

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Often when I speak with students who are majoring in computer sciences, many of them tell me that they have never taken a computer science course until college. This is especially true for the female, black, and Latino students I’ve spoken with as a computer science professor. […]

Supporting Women and the Industry Recently accepted as a BRAID Affiliate, the UF Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering is working to increase diversity in computer science Diversity makes the industry stronger. That’s why UF CISE excels in the number of women throughout our program. Want to learn more about our diversity? Come […]

This May, the UF Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) celebrated a milestone of firsts as France L. Jackson, Ph.D., and Jessica N. Jones, Ph.D., became the first black women to graduate with Ph.D. degrees from the department. These achievements are particularly significant in the field of computer science. While diversity in […]

Many police officers will tell you the riskiest parts of their job are responding to domestic violence calls and making traffic stops. A group of University of Florida students has come up with a way to make the latter a little less dangerous – for everyone. The group, all students in UF’s Herbert Wertheim College […]