Abrita Chakravarty presents her award-winning poster

In late September, a group of Duke students and professors traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, for the 10th Annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, a five-day technical conference and the world's largest gathering of women in computing.

"It's very exhilarating for the students," says Susan Rodger. "It's a chance to see that there really are a lot of women interested in computing." A record-breaking 2,147 participants attended this year's conference, including five undergraduate and seven graduate women from Duke, as well as Rodger and Professor Owen Astrachan.

The theme of this year's meeting was Collaborating Across Boundaries, an appropriate sentiment for an event that drew over 940 undergraduate and graduate students from 29 countries. Attendees enjoyed talks from eminent women in computing, including Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo!, and Duy Loan Le, a Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments.

The bulk of the conference was sessions ranging from technical presentations to mentoring discussions. Rodger participated in a panel about how to move up the academic ladder as well as a workshop on research for undergraduates.

"There are a lot of workshops about career development, including things people don't talk about at other conferences, like how to be a professor and have a kid at the same time," says Susanna Ricco, a PhD candidate in the Department attending the conference for a second time. "It was excellent."

One of the main events of the weekend was a poster session at which Duke's own Abrita Chakravarty took home the prize for best graduate poster. As a result, Chakravarty will present her poster, "A Modular Pipeline for Computational Prediction of Imprinted Human Genes," at the ACM poster contest in June.

The Department of Computer Science was a sponsor of this year's conference and hosted a table in the exhibit hall for the Duke attendees to interact with prospective students and faculty. "It was a great way to talk to people and encourage them to come to Duke," says Rodger.