| Dr. Toni Collis |
| Thu 29 Mar 2018, 14:00 - 15:00 |
| IF 4.31/4.33 |
If you have a question about this talk, please contact: Allison Kruk (v1atayl6)
Title
Opportunities and challenges: diversifying your workforce
Abstract
The under-representation of women and minorities is a challenge that the entire supercomputing industry faces. As a community we are only just beginning to measure and understand how ‘leaky’ our pipeline is, but attrition rates are likely as high as the general tech community: 41% of women working in tech eventually leave the field (compared to just 17% of men).
This session will discuss the work being carried out by Women in HPC to diversify HPC. I will discuss the challenges we face and suggestions for making useful changes to improve inclusion in the workplace, benefitting everyone including those that are currently under-represented. I will also open discussion on similarities with other ‘niche’ computing and technology fields and if we are similarly missing opportunities in other places by focusing primarily on improving diversity across the entirety of computing and technology.
Biography
Dr Toni Collis is Chair and Co-Founder of Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC) as well as the CBDO for Appentra Solutions and Director of Collis-Holmes Innovations. Having previously worked in EPCC, The University of Edinburgh Supercomputing Centre, Toni has spent a large part of her work life focusing on enabling scientists, engineers, academics and many more to access High Performance Computing and is passionate about broadening the availability of the resources available. WHPC was born from this vision: how to achieve equality of opportunity for everyone, so that the benefits of HPC can reach as broad an audience as possible. Her current role at Appentra focuses on democratising access to HPC by using the new Parallware technologies to lower the barrier for academics to write and maintain parallel software. As Chair and Co-Founder of WHPC, Toni has worked on a number of initiatives to improve diversity from developing and leading HPC tutorials for women academics and students to workshops and conferences across the world. Toni participates in a number of voluntary efforts internationally to improve diversity including as a member of the SC18 conference Executive Committee and Inclusivity Chair, and as a member of the XSEDE Advisory Board.