MEDIA RELEASE

Women Take the Spotlight at the IFIP World Computer Congress 2015

Women to Present Three of Seven Plenary Addresses at
Global ICT Gathering in South Korea

Wednesday 9 September 2015 – Women ICT professionals will present three of the seven plenary addresses at next month’s IFIP World Computer Congress 2015 (WCC 2015) being held in Daejeon, South Korea.

Dr Jeannette Wing, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research, Dr Sun-hwa Hahn, President of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, and  Professor Valentina Dagiene of Vilnius University will each present a plenary session during the four day event.

IFIP President, Leon Strous, said the global ICT professional society is proud to offer a conference program that featured a significant number of women amongst its expert speakers.

“In an industry traditionally dominated by men, it’s unusual to see many female speakers at ICT conferences, so we’re delighted to have attracted some very prominent women to share their knowledge and expertise,” he said.

Dr Jeannette Wing of Microsoft will speak on the importance of computational thinking as a fundamental skill that every child should learn.

“Computational thinking must be given equal status within the school curriculum as reading, writing and arithmetic. Regardless of what career or profession they might choose, students will increasingly need computational thinking for the skills it develops in solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behaviour by drawing on concepts integral to computer science,” said Dr Wing.

“Not only will teaching computational thinking inspire future generations to enter the ICT profession, enabling us to meet huge predicted increases in demand for computer scientists and technologists, but this capability offers enormous benefit for many other disciplines,” she said.

Dr Wing is currently on leave from Carnegie Mellon University, where she is the President’s Professor of Computer Science and has twice served as head of the Computer Science Department. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT.

Dr Sun-hwa Hahn, President of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), will speak on the topic of “Predicting Emerging Technologies by Collaboration of Human Intelligence and Machine Intelligence”.

She will discuss the Institute’s intelligent service platform, named InSciTe, which encompasses modules for data gathering, text mining, identity resolution, reasoning, complex event processing and prescriptive analytics, and explain how KISTI’s computer scientists use it to identify and evaluate emerging technologies.

Professor Valentina Dagiene of Lithuania’s Vilnius University, will discuss the importance of gaming, competitions and contests to encourage children to study computing.  Eleven years ago, Professor Dagiene founded the Bebras International Challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking, a global initiative which now attracts over 900,000 students from 40 different countries to test their problem solving capabilities.

At WCC2015, Professor Dagiene will talk about the need to attract more women into ICT careers, especially as software engineers because of the importance of making technologies more intuitive, user friendly and intelligent.

“From running competitions in informatics for school students for more than 20 years, we have noticed that the students find the contest experience very engaging and exciting, as well as a valuable learning experience. Our research shows that young girls are just as good as boys when it comes to solving computing problems, but they later become turned off by the way technology is often taught in schools.

“Our experience with Bebras shows that games and competitions can be a valuable way of teaching computational thinking and stimulating interest in technologies amongst both boys and girls,” Professor Dagiene said.

WCC2015 will be held at Daejeon in South Korea from 4-7 October 2015. The 23rd IFIP World Computer Congress, WCC2015 (http://wcc-2015.org/) will be held from 4-7 October in Daejeon, South Korea. With 13 different streams of content happening under the WCC umbrella, the Congress is expected to attract over 2,000 ICT professionals, computer scientists, researchers and academics to attend over 100 presentations, workshops and panel sessions.

With the theme of “WCC 2015, Opening our Future Together”, the four day event will include specialised conference streams addressing:

For more information about WCC 2015, please visit http://wcc-2015.org/

About IFIP

IFIP, the International Federation for Information Processing, is the global professional federation of societies and associations for people working in Information and Communications Technologies and Sciences. Established under the auspices of UNESCO in 1960 and recognised by the United Nations, IFIP represents ICT professional associations from more than 50 countries and regions with a total membership of over half a million. It also brings together more than 3,500 scientists from industry and academia, organising them into over 100 Working Groups and 13 Technical Committees to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Based in Austria, IFIP organises and supports over 100 conferences each year, fostering the distribution of research and knowledge to academics and industry practitioners alike.

Website: http://ifip.org

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ifipnews

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ifip—international-federation-for-information-processing

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