March 4, 2021 When you think about your carbon footprint, what comes to mind? Driving and flying, probably. Perhaps home energy consumption or those daily Amazon deliveries. But what about watching Netflix or having Zoom meetings? Ever thought about the carbon footprint of the silicon chips inside your phone, smartwatch or the countless other devices inside your home?

Every aspect of modern computing, from the smallest chip to the largest data center comes with a carbon price tag. For the better part of a century, the tech industry and the field of computation as a whole have focused on building smaller, faster, more powerful devices but few have considered their overall environmental impact.

Researchers at theHarvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences(SEAS) are trying to change that.

Over the next decade, the demand, number and types of devices is only going to grow, said Udit Gupta, a PhD candidate in Computer Science at SEAS. We want to know what impact that will have on the environment and how we, as a field, should be thinking about how we adopt more sustainable practices.

Gupta, along withGu-Yeon Wei, the Robert and Suzanne Case Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, andDavid Brooks, the Haley Family Professor of Computer Science, will presenta paper on the environmental footprint of computingat theIEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture.

The SEAS research is part of a collaboration with Facebook, where Gupta is an intern, and Arizona State University.

The team not only explored every aspect of computing, from chip architecture to data center design, but also mapped the entire lifetime of a device, from manufacturing to recycling, to identify the stages where the most emissions occur.

The team found that most emissions related to modern mobile and data-center equipment come from hardware manufacturing and infrastructure.

A lot of the focus has been on how we reduce the amount of energy used by computers, but we found that its also really important to think about the emissions from just building these processors, said Brooks. If manufacturing is really important to emissions, can we design better processors? Can we reduce the complexity of our devices so that manufacturing emissions are lower?

Take chip design, for example.

Todays chips are optimized for size, performance and battery life. The typical chip is about 100 square millimeters of silicon and houses billions of transistors. But at any given time, only a portion of that silicon is being used. In fact, if all the transistors were fired up at the same time, the device would exhaust its battery life and overheat. This so-called dark silicon improves a devices performance and battery life but its wildly inefficient if you consider the carbon footprint that goes into manufacturing the chip.

You have to ask yourself, what is the carbon impact of that added performance, said Wei. Dark silicon offers a boost in energy efficiency but whats the cost in terms of manufacturing? Is there a way to design a smaller and smarter chip that uses all of the silicon available? That is a really intricate, interesting, and exciting problem.

The same issues face data centers. Today, data centers, some of which span many millions of square feet, account for 1 percent of global energy consumption, a number that is expected to grow.

As cloud computing continues to grow, decisions about where to run applications on a device or in a data center are being made based on performance and battery life, not carbon footprint.

We need to be asking whats greener, running applications on the device or in a data center, said Gupta. These decisions must optimize for global carbon emissions by taking into account application characteristics, efficiency of each hardware device, and varying power grids over the day.

The researchers are also challenging industry to look at the chemicals used in manufacturing.

Adding environmental impact to the parameters of computational design requires a massive cultural shift in every level of the field, from undergraduate CS students to CEOs.

To that end, Brooks has partnered withEmbedded EthiCS, a Harvard program that embeds philosophers directly into computer science courses to teach students how to think through the ethical and social implications of their work. Brooks is including an Embedded EthiCS module on computational sustainability in COMPSCI 146: Computer Architecture this spring.

The researchers also hope to partner with faculty from Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS and the Harvard University Center for the Environment to explore how to enact change at the policy level.

The goal of this paper is to raise awareness of the carbon footprint associated with computing and to challenge the field to add carbon footprint to the list of metrics we consider when designing new processes, new computing systems, new hardware, and new ways to use devices. We need this to be a primary objective in the development of computing overall, said Wei.

The paper was co-authored by Sylvia Lee, Jordan Tse, Hsien-Hsin S. Lee and Carole-Jean Wu from Facebook and Young Geun Kim from Arizona State University.

Source: Leah Burrows, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

See the original post here:

Examining the Environmental Impact of Computation and Future of Green Computing - HPCwire

The USC AI Futures Symposium took place January 2021

We all interact with AI systems, but they dont interact with people in the same way that we interact with one another. They know very little, do very little, and learn very little compared to humans.

Imagine a future where AI systems are much more knowledgeable about the world, quickly learn to adapt to our preferences, and can be trusted with critical tasks that go beyond just entertainment or shopping. When will we be able to communicate with AI systems in the same ways that we do with other people?

On January 12-13, 2021, researchers gathered at a virtual USC AI Futures Symposium to share their insights on these topics.

Yolanda Gil, Chair of the 2021 USC AI Futures Symposium

We were very excited that over 300 people from all around the world joined us to learn about USC research in human-AI interaction, which is quite a remarkable number of participants for a virtual meeting and attests to the stature of USC in AI research, said Yolanda Gil, Director for Major Strategic AI and Data Science Initiatives at USCs Information Sciences Institute (ISI) and research professor of computer science, who chaired the Symposium.

L-R: Yannis Yortsos, Cyrus Shahabi, and Craig Knoblock

Yannis Yortsos, Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, presented in the opening session. AI is a strategic priority for USC, endorsed by our new President Carol Folt and Provost Chip Zukoski, he emphasized. The very rich interdisciplinary environment of USC is ideally suited for its development across all disciplines and all endeavors.

This sentiment was echoed by Cyrus Shahabi, Chair of the USC Department of Computer Science, who noted that human-AI interaction is a major AI strength at USC and will be the theme of the new department home at the Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Human-Centered Computation Building. Following that, Craig Knoblock, Keston Executive Director of the USC ISI and research professor of computer science, highlighted the innovative research directions being pursued by USC researchers in this area, including commonsense reasoning, cultural adaptation of dialogue, misinformation, knowledge-rich learning, and responsible decision making.

L-R: Ralph Weischedel, Emilio Ferrara, Craig Knoblock, Wael AbdAlmageed, Ram Nevatia, and Liz Boschee

A session in the symposium was devoted to new research on AI systems that incorporate extensive knowledge about the world. The discussion was led by Ralph Weischedel, research team leader at ISI, and the speakers were Emilio Ferrara, associate professor of communication and computer science and research team leader at ISI; Craig Knoblock; Wael AbdAlmageed, research associate professor; Ram Nevatia, professor of computer science; and Liz Boschee, director at ISI Boston.

Though humans easily acquire common sense from an early age, it has been a notoriously challenging skill for AI to fully grasp. USC is a pioneer in AI research which extracts this type of knowledge from documents, images, and special sources like Wikipedia. While there have been significant advances in extracting individual statements, integrating all those statements into a usable knowledge source and using them to improve the performance of AI systems remains a major challenge.

Furthermore, new insights on detecting and handling misinformation were presented in this session. On social media platforms, its essential to distinguish bots from humans as to alert people to misinformation. Multimedia forensics can give reassurance of the integrity and authenticity of images and videos we see online that may be impersonating others (also known as deepfakes). Sometimes, AI systems simply misunderstand information, and qualifying the origins of any given data can help determine if it can be trusted.

L-R: Sven Koenig, Kristina Lerman, Fred Morstatter, Shri Narayanan, Keith Burghardt, and Bistra Dilkina

Not long after USC computer science emeritus professor George Bekey published a pioneering book on Robot Ethics in 2011, we can already see that ethics concerns have gradually taken center stage in the world of AI research.

This discussion was led by Sven Koenig, professor of computer science, and the USC experts who spoke on this topic were Kristina Lerman, research professor of computer science and research team leader at ISI; Fred Morstatter, research assistant professor of computer science and research lead at ISI; Shri Narayanan, professor of electrical and computer engineering and research director at ISI; Keith Burghardt, computer scientist at ISI; and Bistra Dilkina, associate professor of computer science.

New techniques were presented for identifying and measuring biases in data and understanding their sources in order to mitigate them. Algorithms for ranking, which are used in product recommendations and for search, have long been known to have biases due to popularity or positioning, and new findings show that they can be addressed by reducing instability under different conditions. AI systems can also help reduce biases in media by measuring factors such as on-screen time and speaking time for various demographic groups which expose opportunities to improve equality and diversity.

Inclusiveness and equity are also central topics in AI ethics. Inclusive design of AI systems leads to more equitable experiences that take into account individual differences, particularly in children at different developmental stages. Cultural differences can be identified by observing communications among large groups, with promising results based on analyses of open online collaborative projects from different countries.

Acting responsibly often involves consideration of resource limitations and maximizing impact. Several novel AI techniques were found to be effective for large-scale optimization and machine learning, particularly when learning is informed by downstream decision processes.

L-R: Yan Liu, Pedro Szekely, Greg Van Steeg, Aram Galstyan, Xiang Ren, Jose-Luis Ambite

Though growing at an unprecedented rate, AI systems have a long way to go before they can be on par with human abilities to learning continuously and independently. This session was led by Yan Liu, professor of computer science, and the speakers who addressed this topic included Pedro Szekely, research associate professor in computer science and research director at ISI; Greg Van Steeg, research associate professor in computer science and research lead at ISI; Aram Galstyan, director of Artificial Intelligence Division at ISI and research associate professor in computer science; Xiang Ren, assistant professor of computer science and research lead at ISI; and Jose-Luis Ambite, research associate professor in computer science and research team leader at ISI.

The world is constantly changing, which means our knowledge needs to be up to speed. New research on self-supervised machine learning is opening new doors to using data that has not been augmented with labels, which is what most machine learning approaches require. Studying the effects on continuous learning shows that AI systems that can learn to automatically refresh their beliefs about the world. Another strategy that has been shown to be very effective is distributed federated learning approach, which is used when data is collected but not publicly accessible, as is the case with health and other sensitive data.

As powerful as AI can be, they still need our guidance. New approaches that combine machine learning with human predictions have led to improved forecasting of trends and events. Incorporating human explanations and rationale have also improved machine learning significantly.

L-R: Pedro Szekely, Jon May, Mayank Kejriwal, Jay Pujara, Yolanda Gil, and Marjorie Freedman

USC has a long tradition of tackling problems of societal importance through human-AI interaction. A session was devoted to highlight this work, and was chaired by Pedro Szekely. This session included speakers Jon May, research assistant professor in computer science and research lead at ISI; Mayank Kejriwal, research assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering and research lead at ISI; Jay Pujara, research assistant professor in computer science and research lead at ISI; Yolanda Gil; and Marjorie Freedman, research team leader at ISI.

In times of natural disasters, victims and local first responders communicate in their own languages, which creates barriers for aid coming NGOs and other international organizations. AI technologies that are able to quickly create automated translators for regional languages are radically changing the ability to support emergency response and humanitarian aid.

Protecting runaway children from forced prostitution is often difficult due to worldwide commercial sex trafficking through online advertising and transactions that are difficult to track. Fortunately, significant progress is being made through AI technologies which automatically identify and crawl suspicious sites to detect patterns and trends, thereby generating leads and evidence for law enforcement.

Under-resourced entrepreneurs cannot easily develop solid business plans because of the difficulties in getting comprehensive knowledge about prospective competitors, customers, and existing technologies most relevant to their idea. Statistically, over 50% of new businesses fail within the first 5 years. A special customized market intelligence can be delivered through AI systems that automatically integrates years of data for hundreds of thousands of companies collected from webpages, patent filings, spreadsheets, social media, and regulatory filings with government agencies.

Furthermore, AI scientists could accelerate research by automatically analyzing the wealth of data that is now available in the sciences. AI algorithms for systematic search lead to better solutions by quickly exposing any inconsistencies in findings. AI techniques also reduce the time to create new models for complex systems. AI systems can assist and ultimately collaborate with scientists to accelerate discoveries.

Lastly, privacy and security can be significantly enhanced with AI approaches. For example, social engineering attackers (known as spear-phishing) can be deterred if the cost of an attack is heightened when they are engaged by AI systems instead of by the intended humans. Many other AI approaches are being applied to secure financial transactions, detect and fix code vulnerabilities, and predicting and detecting attacks.

L-R: Elizabeth Churchill, Antonio Damasio, Prem Natarajan

Two keynote speakers from the industry discussed significant challenges in human-AI interaction. Elizabeth Churchill, Director of User Experience at Google and an expert in the design of interactive technologies, made the provocative statement that systems create the conditions under which humans make errors, but the nature of those errors cannot be anticipated because every person is different. Prem Natarajan, Vice President of Amazons Alexa, talked about adapting AI systems by teaching them new concepts when the need arises during interactions.

A third keynote speaker was Antonio Damasio, USC Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Philosophy, who discussed consciousness in terms of how behavior is governed by emotional states (e.g., fear) grounded in feelings which are directly linked to biological states (e.g., pain, hunger). He posed the intriguing question of whether consciousness will be relevant for the design of artificial intelligence systems grounded in physical sensors.

Maja Mataric

The closing session of the symposium featured Maja Mataric, USC Interim Vice President of Research and professor of computer science. She encouraged the AI community to consider the use of AI for major societal challenges. She said that AI must be embraced by major institutions and their operations all the way down: how were distributing vaccines, how were communicating about mask-wearing, and how were approaching equity.

As Mataric succinctly stated, AI is not for the futureAI is now.

For more information about the event, including videos of the sessions, click here.

Continue reading here:

Symposium on the Future of AI: Will AIs Ever Be One of Us? - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

An international team of scholars has read an unopened letter from early modern Europe without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way using an automated computational flattening algorithm. The team, including MIT Libraries and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers and an MIT student and alumna, published their findings today in a Nature Communications article titled, Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents imaged by X-ray microtomography.

The senders of these letters had closed them using letterlocking, the historical process of folding and securing a flat sheet of paper to become its own envelope. Jana Dambrogio, the Thomas F. Peterson Conservator at MIT Libraries, developed letterlocking as a field of study with Daniel Starza Smith, a lecturer in early modern English literature at Kings College London, and the Unlocking History research team. Since the papers folds, tucks, and slits are themselves valuable evidence for historians and conservators, being able to examine the letters contents without irrevocably damaging them is a major advancement in the study of historic documents.

Letterlocking was an everyday activity for centuries, across cultures, borders, and social classes, explains Dambrogio. It plays an integral role in the history of secrecy systems as the missing link between physical communications security techniques from the ancient world and modern digital cryptography. This research takes us right into the heart of a locked letter.

This breakthrough technique was the result of an international and interdisciplinary collaboration between conservators, historians, engineers, imaging experts, and other scholars. "The power of collaboration is that we can combine our different interests and tools to solve bigger problems," says Martin Demaine, artist-in-residence in MITs Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a member of the research team.

The algorithm that makes the virtual unfolding possible was developed by Amanda Ghassaei SM 17 and Holly Jackson, an undergraduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and a participant in MITs Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) at the Center for Bits and Atoms. The virtual unfolding code is openly available on GitHub.

When we got back the first scans of the letter packets, we were instantly hooked, says Ghassaei. Sealed letters are very intriguing objects, and these examples are particularly interesting because of the special attention paid to securing them shut.

Secrets revealed

Were X-raying history, says team member David Mills, X-ray microtomography facilities manager at Queen Mary University of London. Mills, together with Graham Davis, professor of 3D X-ray imaging at Queen Mary, used machines specially designed for use in dentistry to scan unopened locked letters from the 17th century. This resulted in high-resolution volumetric scans, produced by high-contrast time delay integration X-ray microtomography.

Who would have thought that a scanner designed to look at teeth would take us so far? says Davis.

Computational flattening algorithms were then applied to the scans of the letters. This has been done successfully before with scrolls, books, and documents with one or two folds. The intricate folding configurations of the locked letters, however, posed unique technical challenges.

The algorithm ends up doing an impressive job at separating the layers of paper, despite their extreme thinness and tiny gaps between them, sometimes less than the resolution of the scan, says Erik Demaine, professor of computer science at MIT and an expert in computational origami. We weren't sure it would be possible."

The teams approach utilizes a fully 3D geometric analysis that requires no prior information about the number or types of folds or letters in a letter packet. The virtual unfolding generates 2D and 3D reconstructions of the letters in both folded and flat states, plus images of the letters writing surfaces and crease patterns.

One of coolest technical contributions of the work is a technique that explores the folded and flattened representations of a letter simultaneously, says Holly Jackson. Our new technology enables conservators to preserve a letters internal engineering, while still giving historians insight into the lives of the senders and recipients.

This virtual unfolding technique was used to reveal the contents of a letter dated July 31, 1697. It contains a request from Jacques Sennacques to his cousin Pierre Le Pers, a French merchant in The Hague, for a certified copy of a death notice of one Daniel Le Pers. The letter comes from the Brienne Collection, a European postmasters trunk preserving 300-year-old undelivered mail, which has provided a rare opportunity for researchers to study sealed locked letters.

The trunk is a unique time capsule, says David van der Linden, assistant professor in early modern history, Radboud University Nijmegen. It preserves precious insights into the lives of thousands of people from all levels of society, including itinerant musicians, diplomats, and religious refugees. As historians, we regularly explore the lives of people who lived in the past, but to read an intimate story that has never seen the light of day and never even reached its recipient is truly extraordinary.

Advancing a new field

In the Nature Communications article, the team also unveils the first systematization of letterlocking techniques. After studying 250,000 historical letters, they devised a chart of categories and formats that assigns letter examples a security score. Understanding these security techniques of historical correspondence means archival collections can be conserved in ways that protect small but important material details, such as slits, locks, and creases.

Sometimes the past resists scrutiny, explains Daniel Starza Smith. We could simply have cut these letters open, but instead we took the time to study them for their hidden, secret, and inaccessible qualities. Weve learned that letters can be a lot more revealing when they are left unopened.

The research team hopes to make a study collection of letterlocking examples available to scholars and students from a range of disciplines. The virtual unfolding algorithm could also have broad applications: Because it can handle flat, curved, and sharply folded materials, it can be used on many types of historical texts, including letters, scrolls, and books.

What we have achieved is more than simply opening the unopenable, and reading the unreadable, says Nadine Akkerman, reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University. We have shown how truly interdisciplinary work breaks down boundaries to investigate what neither humanities nor the sciences can hope to understand alone.

Computational tools promise to accelerate research on letterlocking as well as reveal new historical evidence. Thanks to this research, adds Rebekah Ahrendt, associate professor of musicology at Utrecht University, we can now imagine new affective histories that physically connect the past and the present, the human and the nonhuman, the tangible and the digital.

The research team includes Jana Dambrogio, Thomas F. Peterson Conservator, MIT Libraries; Amanda Ghassaei, research engineer at Adobe Research; Daniel Starza Smith, lecturer in early modern English literature at Kings College London; Holly Jackson, undergraduate student at MIT; Erik Demaine, professor in EECS; Martin Demaine, robotics engineer in CSAIL and Angelika and Barton Weller Artist-in-Residence in EECS; Graham Davis and David Mills, Queen Mary University of London's Institute of Dentistry; Rebekah Ahrendt, associate professor of musicology at Utrecht University; Nadine Akkerman, reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University; and David van der Linden, assistant professor in early modern history at Radboud University Nijmegen.

This research was supported in part by grants from the Seaver Foundation, the Delmas Foundation, the British Academy, and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek.

Read the rest here:

Researchers virtually open and read sealed historic letters - MIT News

University of Louisiana at Lafayette students who enroll in the states only masters in informatics program will soon be able to complete degree requirements online or in a traditional classroom setting.

The Louisiana Board of Regents approved an online option for UL Lafayettes existing masters degree in informatics in January; students who opt for the online format and are accepted into the program will begin taking courses in August.

Both options feature the same interdisciplinary curriculum taught by the same faculty members with the same intent to prepare students to secure the jobs they want and to thrive in them, said Dr. Mary Farmer-Kaiser, dean of the Graduate School.

Informatics is applied computer science that centers on ways people interact with and share information. Informatics students learn to design and adapt information systems to solve problems that arise in everyday life. Businesses and governments value such systems because they enable them to operate more efficiently.

Prospective students with a bachelors degree in many fields including sciences, engineering, business, social sciences and health sciences may apply for admission into the Universitys masters degree in informatics program.

Its focus is the information technology aspect of enterprise computing, said Dr. Azmy S. Ackleh, dean of Ray P. Authement College of Sciences. Enterprise computing incorporates analytics, reporting, database management and other software solutions systems.

By definition, informatics is applied computing across multiple domains business, health sciences, engineering. So we train students to have applied computing skills," Ackleh explained.

UL Lafayette launched the states only informatics masters degree in 2018. The University began offering a bachelors degree in informatics in Fall 2011. The programs are part of the College of Sciences School of Computing and Informatics.

The programs were established and the online option was added to help address workforce needs in the city, state and nation, Ackleh explained.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, national employment for computer and information technology professionals is projected to grow by 15 percent by the end of the decade.

That trend is evident in Lafayette, where CGI, Perficient and Enquero are among many companies that hire computing and informatics graduates. Each of the large technology companies has opened facilities in the city since 2015. CGI is located in UL Lafayettes University Research Park; Perficient and Enquero are in downtown Lafayette.

The trend is also evident across Louisiana. Over the last decade, companies such as IBM in Baton Rouge, DXC Technology in New Orleans and CenturyLink in Monroe have either relocated to the state or expanded existing operations.

The 33-hour masters degree in informatics degree provides advanced knowledge and training that will prepare graduates for a number of computing-related careers, said Dr. Michael W. Totaro, an associate professor who coordinates the informatics program.

The curriculum incorporates courses in informatics and computing, emphasizes research, and includes thesis and non-thesis options. Students learn about subjects such as human-computer interaction, network infrastructures, systems development, IT security, data analysis and visualization, distributed databases, cloud computing and big data applications.

If a person has interest in technology, computing, information, and data, and how all that can be wrapped together bundled together and used for specific purposes informatics is certainly worth considering, Totaro explained.

Learn more about the new online option for UL Lafayettes masters degree in informatics or email online@louisiana.edu.

Photo caption: The University of Louisiana at Lafayette will begin offering an online option for its masters degree in informatics. The masters degree, the only of its kind in the state, was launched in 2018. Students who opt for the online format and are accepted into the program will begin taking courses in August. Photo credit: Rachel Rafati / University of Louisiana at Lafayette

See original here:

UL Lafayette adds online option to master's degree in informatics - FOX 15

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gender Equality in Tech (GET) Cities, led by SecondMuse and Break Through Tech in partnership with Pivotal Ventures, today launched GET DC as its next city hub. As part of Pivotal Venture's $50 million investment in GET Cities, GET DC will work collaborativelywith the metro region's tech ecosystem to propel more women and underrepresented groups into tech education, careers, and leadership.

"The tech industry impacts all of us, which is why it needs to include all of usespecially women and other underrepresented groups," said Dr. Renee Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures Director of Program Strategy and Investment. "We are excited that GET Cities is coming to the DC Metro Area to help accelerate women's representation and leadership in this growing tech hub. Great ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, which is why it is critical to support tech talent across the country."

The combination of the current economic crisis brought on by the COVID pandemic along with the growing national awareness of inequities across gender, race, and other underrepresented identities in society make this a critical time to scale a movement toward equity in tech. Tech is an industry with the growth potential to support the kind of economic empowerment that should be available to all of us, and women and other underrepresented groups bring essential skills and experience to build a thriving economy.

GET DC will build on the model of the first city of the initiative, GET Chicago,to create an inclusive tech economy by focusing on three key pillars -- academia, industry, and entrepreneurship. Specifically, it aims to:

When selecting a new hub, GET Cities looks at the broad state of gender equity in tech and identifies cities that have strong diversity and the opportunity for impact. DC consistently ranks as one of the best cities for tech due to its growing tech talent pool, proximity to federal government infrastructure and data centers, and the number of Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in the metro area. GET DC is committed to working in the DC Metro Area to accelerate the representation and leadership of women and other underrepresented people in tech, with the mission of supporting the growth of an inclusive tech economy.

"When looking for the right levers to pull to accelerate the influence of women, trans, and non-binary people in tech particularly Black, indigenous, and people of color we want to be able to make an immediate and real impact. We see a lot of opportunity in the DC Metro Area because of its ongoing investments in its regional tech economy and its work around equity with regard to gender and race. And we're excited about building partnerships across advocacy to add to our ecosystem approach currently focused on academia, industry, and entrepreneurship." Leslie Lynn Smith, National Director GET Cities

Break Through Tech, a national initiative that began at Cornell Tech in New York City, willbring together the supply side (academia) and the demand side (industry) to build an ecosystem where more women are graduating with relevant degrees today and finding an inclusive career environment waiting for them for years to come. In Break Through Tech's founding city, the program partnered with the City University of New York, which saw an increase in the number of women pursuing computer science degrees by 61% since Break Through Tech New York launched in 2016.

Break Through Tech chose George Mason University and the University of Maryland, College Park to launch a cross-institutional collaboration with the goal of increasing women graduating with a tech degree by 12.5 percentage points at each university by 2026. Break Through Tech's immersive program will include (but is not limited to): summer programming to ignite interest in tech; new introductory computer science courses designed to encourage inclusion; innovative internship programs to provide real world experiences early in college; and the development of a networked community of women in the DC Metro Area to support, engage, and motivate one another.

"GET DC will impact an emerging tech hub that's bustling with opportunity for women and underrepresented groups in an industry that continues to trend more male and white. Break Through Tech will work towards tackling two key hurdles for women -- access and experience," says Judith Spitz, Founder and Executive Director at Break Through Tech. "Thanks to our GET Cities partner Pivotal Ventures, and Break Through Tech's additional national expansion funders Cognizant U.S. Foundation and Verizon, our program will continue to reach new hubs around the country, building a more inclusive tech economy."

"Computer science is a growing and lucrative field, yet less than 20% of computer science degrees in this country are awarded to women," George Mason University President Gregory Washington said. "George Mason is the largest producer of tech talent in Virginia, and this partnership with Break Through Tech will provide additional opportunities for women to excel in computer science, broadening the capabilities of the digital workforce."

"The University of Maryland is committed to making computing inclusive and accessible for all," said University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines. "Break Through Tech will contribute to our efforts with programs focused on increasing the graduation rate and success of the nearly 1,000 women in our computer science and information science majors."

GET Cities will announce its third city later in 2021. To learn more about GET DC and GET Cities and to get involved, please visit: https://www.getcities.org/

About GET Cities

GET Cities is an initiative designed to accelerate the representation and leadership of women in tech through the development of inclusive tech hubs across the United States. Launched in 2020, GET Cities is led by SecondMuse and Break Through Tech, in partnership with Pivotal Ventures, the investment and incubation company created by Melinda Gates. Now in Chicago and the DC Metro Area, GET Cities will launch its third city later in 2021.

About SecondMuse

SecondMuse is an impact and innovation company that builds resilient economies by supporting entrepreneurs and the ecosystems around them. They do this by designing, developing, and implementing a mix of innovation programming and investing capital. From Singapore to San Francisco, SecondMuse programs define inspiring visions, build lasting businesses, and unite people across the globe. Over the last decade, they've designed and implemented programs on 7 continents with 600+ organizations such as NASA, The World Bank, and Nike. To find out more about how SecondMuse is positively shaping the world, visit: http://www.secondmuse.com.

About Break Through Tech

Launched at Cornell Tech, with support from Pivotal Ventures, Cognizant U.S. Foundation, and Verizon, Break Through Tech provides curriculum innovation, career access, and community building for women in tech. The program originated in 2016 as a program called Women in Technology & Entrepreneurship New York (WiTNY), created at Cornell Tech in partnership with the City University of New York (CUNY) and a broad set of industry partners. Now Break Through Tech is replicating the highly effective ecosystem model originated in New York City to increase women's representation in computing graduates across the United States. To date, the program is in New York City, Chicago, and the DC Metro Area.

Media Contact Information:

Alisha Golden Chief Public Relations Officer | Plan A[emailprotected]+1.717.982.7961

SOURCE Second Muse

Here is the original post:

Gender Equality in Tech (GET) Cities Expands to DC to Diversify the Tech Ecosystem - PRNewswire