iSchool students, staff participate in Grace Hopper Celebration

Julian Chin
Chieh-Li (Julian) Chin, Research Program Manager

PhD student Ly Dinh, doctoral candidate Shadi Rezapour, and Research Manager Chieh-Li "Julian" Chin will participate in the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), which will be held virtually from September 29-October 3. Produced by AnitaB.org and presented in partnership with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), GHC is the world's largest gathering of women technologists. The theme of GHC 2020 is #TOGETHERWEBUILD.

Chin will present the poster, "Broadening Participation in Smart Community to Promote Digital Inclusion." The poster will highlight the Smart Community Project, in which community broadband is leveraged “to enhance civic awareness of socio-technical issues, empower local change makers and idea generators, improve digital inclusion and digital equity, encourage researchers and students to develop solutions for the local community, and enable a sustainable smart community."

Chin's research interests focus on data ethics and regulations in research practices in the area of responsible computing. She earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from National Taiwan University and master's degrees in computer science and library and information science from Illinois.

Rezapour received a 2020 Bloomberg/National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Conference Grant. The grant includes the GHC conference registration, invitation to private virtual events with Bloomberg engineers, curated content sessions and discussions supported by NCWIT research, and networking opportunities with Bloomberg LP. Rezapour is conducting research on topics related to natural language processing, machine learning, and network analysis. She holds an MS in information management from Illinois.

Dinh received one of the competitive GHC Student Scholarships, which are awarded by AnitaB.org and cover conference expenses. Dinh's research interests lie at the intersection of computational social science, network theories and applications, and organizational communication. She holds a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of Southern California and a master's degree in communication from Illinois.

The iSchool and ACM's Illinois chapter on Women in Computing (ACM-W) co-hosted a writing workshop earlier this year to help female students with their applications to GHC. Dinh, whose application was successful, was one of the workshop attendees. Associate Professor Jana Diesner is the faculty sponsor of the ACM-W chapter, and several iSchool PhD students, including Dinh and Rezapour (chapter chair), are members.