Manuela Veloso Will Keynote Grace Hopper Celebration

Monday, August 10, 2015 - by Byron Spice

Manuela Veloso, the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science, will be the keynote speaker at this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Manuela Veloso, the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science, will be the keynote speaker at this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Oct. 14–16 in Houston. 

"I am thrilled to be a keynote speaker at this year's Grace Hopper Celebration, and I look forward to the opportunity to discuss the importance of recruiting, retaining and advancing more prominent women in technology," Veloso said. "I am excited to encourage all these talented women technologists to pursue their career goals and become leaders in technical fields."

The Hopper celebration, organized by the Anita Borg Institute, is the largest gathering of women in computing in the world. The institute expects 12,000 attendees this year, a 50 percent increase from last year. 

Veloso will present the keynote address on Friday, Oct. 16. Another distinguished technologist, Clara Shih, the CEO and founder of Hearsay Social and a former Anita Borg Scholar, will speak during the plenary session on Wednesday, Oct. 14. 

"We're delighted to have Manuela and Clara speak at this year's Grace Hopper Celebration. They are both examples of brilliant technical women who deserve more visibility, and they epitomize this year's GHC theme of 'Our Time to Lead,'" said Telle Whitney, president and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute. "Manuela and Clara have both demonstrated incredible leadership skills in their respective careers and we are exceptionally fortunate to hear from them at GHC."

Veloso's research covers artificial intelligence and robotics. She founded and directs the CORAL research laboratory, which studies autonomous agents that Collaborate, Observe, Reason, Act and Learn. She was the past president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and a founding trustee and former president of the RoboCup Federation. Veloso's work in robotics, including collaborative robots and soccer-playing robots, has been featured on CBS Saturday Morning and PBS Kids.

For more information, Contact:
Byron Spice | 412-268-9068 | bspice@cs.cmu.edu