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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

by Lisa Hsu on February 5, 2020

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 Megan Wachs

Megan Wachs

VP of Engineering
SiFive
Personal URL

Research Statement

Currently serving as SiFive's VP of Hardware Engineering. Passionate about getting more women into the open source community. R & D interests include Chip Generators, Cryptographic Hardware, shared memory protocols, accelerating custom ASIC Design. Earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (w/ Prof. Mark Horowitz) and her undergraduate degree in Engineering from Brown University.

Interests

Architectural Support For Programming Languages Or Software Development, Architectural Support For Security Or Virtualization
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 Tali Moreshet

Tali Moreshet

Master Lecturer
Boston University
Personal URL

Research Statement

Research interests include energy-efficient computing, hardware-software co-design, near memory processing, non-volatile memory.

Interests

Iot, Mobile and Embedded Architecture, Multiprocessor Systems, Processor, Memory, and Storage Systems Architecture
Picture of Iyswarya Narayanan

Iyswarya Narayanan

Performance and Capacity Engineer
Facebook
Personal URL

Research Statement

I am an infrastructure engineer at Facebook. I graduated from Penn State with a PhD in 2019. I am interested in optimizing the physical infrastructure of a datacenter viz., power, compute, memory and storage. In my recent works I applied data analytics, system-level profiling and optimizations for efficient datacenter operations.

During PhD, I spent three summers as an intern at Microsoft Research which greatly shaped my research directions. My work on flash reliability titled, SSD failures in datacenters: What? When? Why? was awarded Best Student Paper at SYSTOR-2016. I have also received outstanding graduate research assistant award at Penn State in 2018.

Interests

Datacenter-Scale Computing, Evaluation and Measurement Of Real Systems, Processor, Memory, and Storage Systems Architecture

Full Directory // List Yourself // Update Profile

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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