For Immediate Release
June 24, 2008
Media contact: Ann Redelfs, ann@redelfs.us, 218.734.3216
Portland, Oregon, USA--The 2009 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity
in Computing Conference is now accepting proposals for papers, panels,
workshops, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, posters, the Robotics
Competition, and the Doctoral Consortium. The conference brings
together diverse leading researchers from around the world to present
their work on state-of-the-art research in the field of computing. The
2009 event, the fifth in the series, will take place April 1-4, 2009
at the Portland, Oregon Marriott Downtown Waterfront.
The conference theme of "Intellect, Initiative, Insight, and
Innovation" should be considered in submissions that may cover any
area of computing, computational math and science, and diversity
issues in these disciplines. Letters of intent to participate in the
Robotics Competition are due July 30, 2008, and robotics checkpoint
materials are due September 5, 2008. Papers, posters, and other
submissions are due September 5, 2008. Accepted papers presented at
the conference will be included in the Tapia conference proceedings
published by ACM Press.
There is a strong focus on student participation, particularly through
papers, posters, the Robotics Competition, and the Doctoral
Consortium. Papers provide students a valuable opportunity to present
their work, gain experience in public speaking, and have their
research published in the conference proceedings. The posters
competition will be organized as an ACM Student Research Competition
(SRC). The top posters (1st, 2nd, & 3rd place) in the graduate and
undergraduate student categories will advance to the ACM SRC Grand
Finals and will be recognized at the prestigious ACM Awards banquet.
Student teams in the Tapia 2009 Robotics Competition will be focused
on a search and rescue task and will involve simulated and physical
disaster environments where the goal is to identify and locate
objects. The competition is a staged event where the first stage
involves building a software solution for a simulator and the second
stage requires migration to a robot equipped with touch and camera
sensors.
The Doctoral Consortium, which is a one-day workshop immediately
preceding the Tapia 2009 Conference, will provide an opportunity for
Ph.D. students who have been accepted to participate to discuss and
explore their research interests and career objectives with a panel of
established researchers in computing and in computational mathematics,
science and engineering.
The many supporters from academia, industry, and the government allow
the conference to offer student scholarships to attend. Applications
for student scholarships will be accepted at the conference Website
after July 30, 2008 and are due by October 15, 2008.
About the Tapia Conference
The Tapia conference series is organized by the Coalition to Diversify
Computing and sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in
cooperation with the Computing Research Association. It honors the
significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, University
Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in the
Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics and Director of
the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education 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 100 mathematical research papers.
