Our

Mission

Women in Computer Architecture (WICARCH) is designed to create a community for women studying and working in the field of computer architecture. Our goal is to promote women in computer architecture and increase visibility for their research and development contributions. We welcome participation from all women including students, post docs, industry researchers and developers and faculty members. To be listed in our directory, please click here.

Profiles of WICArch

The mission of this section is to profile women in computer architecture across many walks of our field, from [junior, senior] x [industry, academia].

If you would like to be profiled, would like to nominate someone to be profiled, or would like to write a profile, please let us know by wicarch-chair@acm.org

Mengjia Yan

Dr. Mengjia Yan is undoubtedly one of the most delightful people you will ever meet – smart, positive, exceedingly wise beyond her years, and the kind of person who can turn a frown upside down.  She was paired with me as a mentee at ISCA 2018, but I genuinely think that it is I who have benefited from the relationship.  These days, she is a new assistant professor at MIT, having recently completed her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019.

Read more...

WICArch Directory

We actively maintain a list of women working in the field of computer architecture.  The goal of this list is many-fold.  First, the list services as a resource for program chairs and conference organizers to identify women to serve in key technical roles such as keynote, panels and program committees.  Second, the list is designed to foster community and help women connect with other women in computer architecture.  This list can be used by current and potential graduate students to find advisors and mentors. Four profiles, selected randomly, are shown below.  We encourage you to browse the full directory.

Picture of Oana Balmau

Oana Balmau

Assistant Professor
McGill University
Personal URL

Research Statement

My research interests are centered around Computer Systems. I am currently focusing on storage and persistent memory technologies, with an emphasis on their impact on the way we manage large-scale data for emerging workloads in Data Science and the Internet of Things.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science at EPFL/the University of Sydney in 2020, advised by Prof. Willy Zwaenepoel. My dissertation research was on the design and implementation of efficient key-value stores for future hardware and performance requirements.

Interests

Architecture For Emerging Technologies and Applications, Datacenter-Scale Computing, Evaluation and Measurement Of Real Systems, Iot, Mobile and Embedded Architecture
Picture of Darya

Darya

Graduate Student
Univeristy of Rochester
(No URL)

Research Statement

Darya Mikhailenko is pursuing a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester under the supervision of Prof. Engin Ipek. Her interests cover areas of energy-efficient computer architectures, machine learning for computer vision applications, memory management, accelerators, and architecture modeling for emerging technologies. Darya worked as a research assistant at Nanoelectronics Research Laboratory (Purdue University, U.S.A.) and Bioinspired Microelectronics Systems Laboratory (Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan) on the implementation of brain-computer architecture to actualize deep neural networks. Her recent work was dedicated to techniques to minimize data movement energy by exploiting asymmetric on- and off-chip interconnects. Currently, she researches microarchitecture level optimizations for AR/VR applications.

Darya is looking for internships in the field of AR/VR related but not limited to computer architecture and machine learning algorithms.

Interests

Architecture For Emerging Technologies and Applications, Effects Of Circuits Or Technology On Architecture, Instruction, Thread and Data-Level Parallelism, Interconnection Network, Router and Network Interface Architecture, Iot, Mobile and Embedded Architecture, Processor, Memory, and Storage Systems Architecture
Picture of Jennifer Volk

Jennifer Volk

Graduate Student
University of California, Santa Barbara
Personal URL

Research Statement

I am a third-year PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering interested in new and niche logic families for high-performance computing purposes, including temporal-based encoding (Race Logic), and exploring superconducting architectural and circuit design trade-offs between area, energy, and tolerance to variability. I have co-authored several papers at ISCA and ASPLOS on novel logic paradigms applied to superconducting technologies. I am currently pursuing several projects, including new neuromorphic gates in superconducting electronics, and new fan-out techniques for the same technology. I have a diverse background ranging from instrumentation and testing in High-Energy Physics to embedded development in the health and wellness industry, and I received my undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Cruz. If you would like to hear about my research, please reach out!

Interests

Accelerator-Based, Application-Specific and Reconfigurable Architecture, Architecture For Emerging Technologies and Applications, Effects Of Circuits Or Technology On Architecture
Picture of Natalie Enright Jerger

Natalie Enright Jerger

Professor
University of Toronto
Personal URL

Research Statement

Natalie Enright Jerger is the Canada Research Chair in Computer Architecture and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. She is currently serving as the Director of the Division of Engineering Scinece at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, she received her MSEE and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004 and 2008, respectively. She received her Bachelor's degree from Purdue University in 2002. She is a recipient of the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation Early Researcher Award in 2012, the 2014 Ontario Professional Engineers Young Engineer Medal recipient and the 2015 Borg Early Career Award winner. She served as the program co-chair of the 7th Network-on-Chip Symposium, as the program chair of the 20th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture and as program co-chair for the International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems in 2023. She is currently serving as the ACM SIGARCH Chair. Her current research explores on-chip networks, approximate computing, IoT architectures and machine learning acceleration. She is also passionate about increasing the representation of women in computing, particular in computer architecture. She is the former chair of the organizing committee for the Women in Computer Architecture group (WICARCH). In 2017, she co-authored the second edition of the Computer Architecture Synthesis Lecture on On-Chip Networks with Li-Shiuan Peh and Tushar Krishna. Her research has been supported by NSERC, Intel, CFI, AMD and Qualcomm.

Interests

Architecture Modeling and Simulation Methodologies, Interconnection Network, Router and Network Interface Architecture, Iot, Mobile and Embedded Architecture, Multiprocessor Systems, Processor, Memory, and Storage Systems Architecture
We regularly organize a social gathering of women at the start of major architecture conferences (ISCA, HPCA, ASPLOS and MICRO).  These meet ups help newcomers to our conferences become better integrated in the community and reduce some of the pressure and intimidation they might feel at their first conference.  They provide great networking opportunities.  We hope to see you at the next one!
Would you like to attend a SIGARCH-sponsored event, but cannot because the cost of child-care is prohibitive? SIGARCH provides funds for a limited number of grants that support child care for members that would like to participate in a SIGARCH-sponsored event but are unable to do so without this support. SIGARCH provides financial assistance to subsidize a variety of child-care options. View details here.
Annually, we provide a brochure of upcoming female graduates in computer architecture. The goal of this brochure is to bring greater visibility to women on the job market and to celebrate their success as PhD students.

2018-2019 Candidates
2019 Candidates

Check out our WICARCH YouTube channel which features recorded technical talks by members of the WICARCH community.

Initiatives

We organize various initiatives to better connect women in computer architecture.

Join Our Mailing List

Our mailing list is maintained through ACM.  You can join in 3 easy steps:

1. Join SIGARCH/SIGMICRO (you don’t need to be a full ACM member — you can join a SIG only which is pretty cheap!)

SIGARCH   |   SIGMICRO

2. Update your gender in your myACM account (create/activate account as needed)

Student members: if you log into myACM, you should see a “My Student Profile” on the left menu.  This is where you can specify gender.
Professional members: if you log into myACM, you should see a “My Professional and Technical Interest Profile” on the left menu you.  This is where you can specify gender.
3. Accept to receive emails from ACM:
In myACM, under “My Contact Information”, “Email Policy”, “Current preference” should have the box “Please send me ACM Announcements via email” checked.

Join Our Slack Channel

We offer an informal mentoring program through our slack channel (wicarch.slack.com).  Women at all career stages are encouraged to join.  The mentoring program provides an easy way to connect with other women and receive advice on a wide range of career and personal issues.

If you need assistance in joining our mailing list or slack channel, please send email to wicarch-chair@acm.org.

This website serves women in the field of computer architecture.
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