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Dr. Anita Borg (1949 - 2003) was the Founder of the Institute for Women and Technology and the Co-Founder of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. On her passing the Institute was renamed in her honor to the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, (www.anitaborg.org).
Anita's work to change the world for women and for technology and to make women's brilliance and perspective drive new and relevant technology received international recognition. She was been featured in numerous national print, television, radio and web publications including CBS's 60 Minutes. In 1999, she was appointed by President Clinton to the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology (CAWMSET) and in 2002 was recognized with the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment.
Dr. Borg was a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and a member of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA). During 1998-89, she served as a member of the National Academy of Engineering's Committee for the Celebration of Women in Engineering which created the Summit on Women in Engineering in May 1999. She has served on the National Research Council's Committee on Women in Science and Engineering and was a member of the Committees on Women of both the CRA and the ACM. She was published and served on program committees for conferences in the computer architecture and operating systems communities, and was regularly asked to speak about both her technical work and her work on behalf of women scientists and engineers.
Dr. Borg received numerous awards. In 1995 she received one of three Pioneer Awards from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association of Women in Computing for her work on behalf of women in the computing field. In June 1998, she was inducted into the WITI Hall of Fame. In October 1999, Dr. Borg received the Woman of Innovation and Invention Award from the Melitta Bentz Corporation.
Dr. Borg received her Ph.D. from the Courant Institute at New York University in 1981 for research in the area of operating systems synchronization efficiency. Following graduate schools, she spent four years designing and building a fault tolerant UNIX-based operating system for Auragen Systems Corp., a small startup in New Jersey, USA. In 1985, at Nixdorf Computer in Germany, she oversaw the completion of that system. Eventually, it was integrated into a successful operating system product (Targon) at Nixdorf. 1986, she joined Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, USA. There, she developed new tools for predicting the performance future microprocessor memory systems. Many of today's memory performance analysis tools are based on that work. In late 1992, Dr. Borg moved to the Network Systems Laboratory at Digital where she developed a new system for supporting efficient inter-organizational communication. The existing system, Mecca, is fully web accessible and provides security, privacy filtering and most importantly, the ability to get the right information to the right people based on their position, location or interests. This work is the basis of a project at the Institute for Women and Technology to develop better tools for communication and information sharing in large inter-organizational communities.
Throughout her career, Dr. Borg has worked to encourage women to pursue careers in computing. In 1987, she started systers, an electronic community for technical women in computing. Today, systers has 2500 members in 38 countries and provides an international community of advice and support. In 1994, Dr. Borg and Dr. Telle Whitney, then at Actel Corporation, founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This is a prestigious technical conference featuring talks by women who are changing the face of our world. The 1994, 1997, 2000 and 2002 conferences sold out. In 2004 the conference will be held Chicago, Illinois.
In December 1997, Dr. Borg moved to Xerox PARC which has been supported in her effort to grow the independent non-profit Institute for Women and Technology. The Institute is supported by Xerox, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq Microsoft Corporation and individuals as it works to bring women's perspective, needs and brilliance to the development of future technologies for a better world. In May of 2002 the Institute moved into new offices at HP Labs.
Dr. Borg was born "Anita Borg Naffz" in 1949 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She grew up in Palatine, Illinois, Kaneohe, Hawaii., and Mukilteo, Washington. Her first two years of college were spent at the University of Washington in Seattle. After a two year break working in Manhattan and learning COBOL, she returned to school at New York University. She lived in Palo Alto, California since 1986, where she was an outdoorswoman, enjoying hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, scuba diving, gardening and flying.
contact: media@gracehopper.org or 650.236.4079
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