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 Aninda Manocha

Aninda Manocha

Member of Technical Staff
Rivos Inc.
Personal URL

Research Statement

Aninda Manocha received her Ph.D student in Computer Science at Princeton University. She was advised by Professor Margaret Martonosi in the broad area of Computer Architecture. More specifically, she worked on the design of reconfigurable hardware to accelerate a variety of software applications with a focus on the application and compiler interface. She also worked on memory hierarchy designs and operating system techniques tailored to irregular, memory-intensive graph applications. She received her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as Computer Science from Duke University in 2018. She now works at Rivos.

Interests

Accelerator-Based, Application-Specific and Reconfigurable Architecture, Architectural Support For Programming Languages Or Software Development, Architecture For Emerging Technologies and Applications, Architecture Modeling and Simulation Methodologies, Multiprocessor Systems, Processor, Memory, and Storage Systems Architecture
Picture of Gnanambikai Krishnakumar

Gnanambikai Krishnakumar

Ph.D. candidate
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
(No URL)

Research Statement

I'm a Ph.D. candidate at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, advised by Prof. Chester Rebeiro. My research interests are broadly in the area of secure systems design, with a specific focus on micro-architecture level solutions against various attacks against cryptographic implementations, such as cache side-channel attacks. I'm also interested in exploring the applications of AI to help in building a more secure framework. I was one among the 12 candidates across the world to present my research at Lenovo AI Innovation Challenge Event at SuperComputing Conference 2017, Denver, Colorado. I was also one of the three-member team from IIT Madras that won the First Place in the CSAW Embedded Security Challenge 2016. We designed a secure implementation of an OpenRISC processor to detect and prevent buffer overflow attacks.

Interests

Architectural Support For Security Or Virtualization, Processor, Memory, and Storage Systems Architecture
Placeholder. No Picture provided by Cristina Silvano

Cristina Silvano

Professor
Politecnico di Milano
Personal URL

Research Statement

My research focuses on Computer Architectures and Electronic Design Automation, with emphasis on power-aware design for embedded systems, design space exploration of energy-efficient computer architectures and application autotuning for manycore architectures and High-Performance Computing. In 2017, I have been elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow “for contributions to energy-efficient computer architectures”. Recently I was European Project Coordinator of the H2020-FET-HPC project ANTAREX-671623 (2015-2018) on "Autotuning and adaptivity approach for energy efficient exascale HPC systems”. I was Project Coordinator of two other European projects: FP7-2PARMA-248716 (2010-2013) and FP7-MULTICUBE-216693 (2008-2010). I am an active member of the scientific community and I regularly serve in several international program committees. I annually teach basic and advanced courses on computer architectures and operating systems.

Interests

Accelerator-Based, Application-Specific and Reconfigurable Architecture, Architecture For Emerging Technologies and Applications, Multiprocessor Systems
Picture of Mahita

Mahita

CPU performance architect
Google, NCSU
Personal URL

Research Statement

I am passionate about research and teaching. I want to gain expertise in the field of multi-core architecture and improve coherency and synchronization methods which are crucial for performance in the cutting edge computing applications. I recently gradauted and my research proposed multi-word atomics and its implementation in hardware to assist lock-free programs that are otherwise extremely difficult to program. I am currently working as a CPU architect at Google's CPU team. Additionally, I strongly believe that diversity is instrumental in finding innovative solutions and am committed to making computing a more inclusive world.

Interests

Architecture For Emerging Technologies and Applications, Architecture Modeling and Simulation Methodologies
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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