FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 18, 2005
Contact: Jon Bashor, JBashor@lbl.gov, 510-486-5849

Registration Now Open for 2005 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Registration is now open for the 2005 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference to be held Oct. 19-22, 2005, in Albuquerque.

Conference registration information can be found at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/Tapia2005/registration.html. The advance program for the Tapia conference is on line at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/Tapia2005/program.html.

"This year's conference program represents a diverse spectrum of invited speakers, panel discussions, technical papers and birds-of-a-feather sessions covering a broad range of interest areas in computing," said 2005 Tapia Conference Chair Pamela Williams of Sandia National Laboratories. "Whether you are an established researcher, mid-career professional or student still exploring your options in computing, we think youÕll find the conference both useful and informative."

In addition to the extensive technical program, the conference is aimed at providing a supportive networking environment for under-represented groups across the broad range of computing and information technology, from science to business to the arts to infrastructure. Tapia 2005 is co-sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, in cooperation with the Computing Research Association.

The Tapia conference series honors the significant contributions of Richard A. Tapia, a mathematician and professor in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is internationally known for his research in computational and mathematical sciences and is a national leader in education and outreach programs. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books and more than 80 mathematical research papers. His current positions at Rice are Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics; Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Office of Graduate Studies; and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education.

The Tapia conference series enjoys the financial support of a number of academic, research and business organizations at several levels:

• Platinum Supporter: the National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Gold Supporter: the Rice-Houston Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Program
• Silver Supporters: the Engaging People In Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC) collaboration, Google, IBM, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Microsoft, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Computer Science Department at Texas A&M University
• Bronze Supporters: Auburn University, Hewlett-Packard, Indiana University, Information Technology at Purdue University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin
• Contributors: the University of North Texas, the Computer Science Department and the College of Science at Purdue University, the Computer Science Department at UI Urbana-Champaign, and the Ohio Supercomputer Center have already committed support for Tapia 2005.

For more information about the different levels of support and the associated benefits, go to: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/Tapia2005/supporterbenefits.html.

For more information about the Tapia 2005 conference, visit the Web site at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/Tapia2005/.

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