The Anita Borg Institute (ABI), a non-profit organization focused on the advancement of women in computing, has announced the winners of the 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) ABIE Awards.

Each year, the GHC ABIE Awards recognize female leaders in the categories of technical leadership, social impact, innovative teaching practices, emerging leadership and international change agent.  

The winners are nominated by their peers and chosen by a panel of fellow technologists and past ABIE Award winners based on their extraordinary achievements and commitment to excellence.

This year’s GHC ABIE Awards and their winners, respectively, are:

Technical Leadership ABIE Award 

The Technical Leadership ABIE Award recognizes women technologists who demonstrate leadership through their contributions to technology and achievements in increasing the impact of women on technology.

• Winner: Lydia E. Kavraki, Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University. Her research focuses on physical algorithms and their applications in robotics, computational structural biology, and translational bioinformatics.

Social Impact ABIE Award 

The Social Impact ABIE Award recognizes those who have made a positive impact on women, technology, and society. 

• Winner: Michal Segalov and Daniela Raijman, team of software engineers from Google who co-founded Mind the Gap, a Google program focused on encouraging high school girls to select computer science and math as their high-school major.

Change Agent ABIE Awards 

The Change Agent ABIE Awards recognize international women who have created opportunities for girls and women in technology abroad.

• Winners: María Celeste Medina, co-founder of Ada IT, a Buenos Aires-based software startup focused on generating job opportunities for women and Mai Abualkas Temraz, Mentorship & Women’s Inclusivity Program Coordinator at Gaza Sky Geeks, Gaza’s first startup accelerator and co-working hub.

Richard Newton Educator ABIE Award 

The A. Richard Newton Educator ABIE Award recognizes educators who develop innovative teaching practices and approaches that attract girls and women to computing, engineering, and math.

• Winner: Joanne McGrath Cohoon, Full Professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Engineering & Society. She has researched the gender imbalance in computing for almost twenty years, and put this knowledge into practice, particularly through her work with the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT).

Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award 

The Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award recognizes a junior faculty member for high-quality research and significant positive impact on diversity. 

• Winner: Lydia Tapia, Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of New Mexico where she researches methodologies for the simulation and analysis of motions. She has applied these ideas to both robots and disease causing proteins.

The Anita Borg Institute will celebrate the ABIE Award winners at the 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, held in Houston, Texas on October 14 – 16, 2015.

For more information on the Awards and the winners, read the press release on the Anita Borg website.