WITI announces 2012 Hall of Fame Award Honorees: Dr. Genevieve Bell, Intel; Dr. Jane Lubchenco; Dr. Joanne Martin; Ms. Gwynne Shotwell . The 17th Annual WITI Hall of Fame Award Ceremony Takes Place at the Marriott Santa Clara on the Evening of Monday, June 4, 2012, during WITI’s Women Powering Technology Summit
San Jose, CA, (PRWeb) May 15, 2012 — WITI (Women In Technology International) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 17th Annual WITI Hall of Fame Awards to be honored on the evening of Monday, June 4, 2012 during the three day Annual WITI Women Powering Technology Summit at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California, June 3-5, 2012. The Women in Science and Technology Hall of Fame Awards, sponsored by the Women In Technology Foundation, Avnet, IBM and Thomson Reuters, are considered among the most illustrious honors for women in science and technology.
The four distinguished recipients of this year’s WITI Hall of Fame Awards are Genevieve Bell, Ph.D., Director, User Interaction Experience, Intel Labs, Intel Corporation; Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., Administrator, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); Joanne Martin, Ph.D., Distinguished Engineer and Vice President, Technology, IBM Corporation; and Gwynne Shotwell, President, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. On-air host and journalist Veronica Belmont of Revision3 will serve as Master of Ceremonies, while many of the industry’s top executives and professionals will introduce the honorees.
„The WITI Hall of Fame was established to recognize the notable contributions of women who are leading innovation in technology,“ says Carolyn Leighton, WITI Founder and Chairwoman. „These women represent the role models who will inspire current and future generations to reach higher and push new boundary lines to make a positive difference for all of us.“
The 2012 WITI Hall of Fame Awards Banquet and Induction ceremony will mark WITI’s 17th year of honoring women for their significant contributions to science and technology. The women chosen for induction have demonstrated notable contributions to society and business while also dedicating themselves to nurturing women and girls to seek great achievements in science and technology.
The 2012 WITI Hall of Fame Honorees include:
Genevieve Bell, Ph.D.
Director, User Interaction Experience, Intel Labs, Intel Corporation
Dr. Genevieve Bell is an Australian-born anthropologist and researcher. As director of User Interaction and Experience in Intel Labs, she leads a research team of social scientists, interaction designers, human factors engineers, and computer scientists. This team shapes and helps create new Intel technologies and products that are increasingly designed around people’s needs and desires. In this team and her prior roles, Dr. Bell has fundamentally altered the way Intel envisions and plans its future products so that they are centered on people’s needs rather than simply silicon capabilities.
In addition to leading this increasingly important area of research at Intel, Dr. Bell is an accomplished industry pundit on the intersection of culture and technology. She is a regular public speaker and panelist at technology conferences worldwide, sharing insights gained from her extensive international field work and research. In 2011 she co-wrote „Divining the Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing“ with Prof. Paul Dourish of UC Irvine. In 2010, Dr. Bell was named one of Fast Company’s inaugural „100 Most Creative People in Business.“ She also is the recipient of several patents for consumer electronics innovations.
Moving to the United States for her undergraduate studies, she graduated from Bryn Mawr with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology. She then attended Stanford University, earning her master’s degree and a doctorate in cultural anthropology, as well as acting as a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. With a father who was an engineer and a mother who was an anthropologist, perhaps Dr. Bell was fated to ultimately work for a technology company, joining Intel in 1998.
Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D.Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere; and Administrator, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Dr. Jane Lubchenco has been the under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of NOAA since 2009. Nominated by President Obama in December 2008 as part of his „Science Team,“ she is a marine ecologist and environmental scientist by training, with expertise in oceans, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being. She received her B.A. in biology from Colorado College, her M.S. in zoology from the University of Washington, and her Ph.D. in ecology from Harvard University. Her academic career as a professor began at Harvard University and continued at Oregon State University until her appointment as NOAA administrator.
Under Dr. Lubchenco’s leadership, NOAA has focused on restoring fisheries to sustainability and profitability, restoring oceans and coasts to a healthy state, ensuring continuity of the nation’s weather and other environmental satellites, developing a Weather-Ready Nation, promoting climate science and delivering quality climate products, strengthening science and ensuring scientific integrity at NOAA, and delivering the highest quality science, services, and stewardship possible.
Dr. Lubchenco has served on numerous commissions and studies; as president for the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Council for Science, and the Ecological Society of America; and as a member of the National Science Board.
Before coming to NOAA, Dr. Lubchenco co-founded three organizations (The Leopold Leadership Program, the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea [COMPASS], and Climate Central) that aim to communicate scientific knowledge to the public, policy makers, media and industry; she also co-founded a research consortium, PISCO, which studies the near-shore ocean along the coasts of Oregon and California.
Joanne Martin, Ph.D.Distinguished Engineer and Vice President, Technology, IBM Corporation
As a Distinguished Engineer and Vice President of Technology, reporting to Linda Sanford in IBM’s Enterprise Transformation organization, Joanne Martin is responsible for supporting the development of IBM’s technical strategy and for the global technical community. She is Past-President of the IBM Academy of Technology. Prior, she was VP of Infrastructure Management Services for Global Technology Services (GTS), responsible for providing a consistent and coherent architecture for the development and delivery of service products in the transformed GTS. Dr. Martin was the Business Line Manager for Scientific and Technical Computing for the RS6000 Division, responsible for IBM’s high performance scientific computing systems. She served on the management team that developed and delivered IBM’s first supercomputer, with specific responsibility for the performance measurement and analysis of the system.
Dr. Martin was founding Editor-in-Chief of the MIT Press Journal of Supercomputer Applications, and on the steering committee that created the successful ACM/IEEE conference series on High Performance Computing and Communications – chairing the conference in 1990 and chairing the technical program for 1998. She has served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and National Research Council. She was named by Working Mother magazine as one of the 25 most influential working mothers for 1998.
Dr. Martin earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Johns Hopkins University. She began her research career at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she conducted the first comprehensive analysis of the scientific workload and its relationship to the performance of supercomputers. In 1984, Dr. Martin joined IBM as a Research Staff Member at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center to continue her research into supercomputer performance evaluation and measurement. She was appointed a Senior Technical Staff Member in 1993, and elected to the IBM Academy in 1997. Dr. Martin is currently a member of the Academy’s Technology Council.
Gwynne Shotwell President, SpaceX Corporation
Gwynne Shotwell is President of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), responsible for day-to-day operations and for managing all customer and strategic relations to support company growth. She joined SpaceX in 2002 as Vice President of Business Development and built the Falcon vehicle family manifest to over 40 launches, representing over $3 billion in revenue. Ms. Shotwell is a member of the SpaceX Board of Directors.
Prior, Ms. Shotwell spent more than ten years at the Aerospace Corporation, where she held positions in Space Systems Engineering Technology as well as Project Management. She was promoted to Chief Engineer of an MLV-class satellite program, managed a landmark study for the Federal Aviation Administration on commercial space transportation, and completed an extensive analysis of space policy for NASA’s future investment in space transportation. Ms. Shotwell was subsequently recruited to be Director of Microcosm’s Space Systems Division, where she served on the executive committee and directed corporate business development.
In 2004, she was elected statewide to the California Space Authority Board of Directors and served on its executive committee; she has also served as an officer of the AIAA Space Systems Technical Committee. Ms. Shotwell participates in a variety of STEM (Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics)- related programs, including the Frank J. Redd Student Scholarship Competition; under her leadership the committee raised over $350,000 in scholarships in six years.
Ms. Shotwell received, with honors, her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from Northwestern University in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. She has authored dozens of papers on a variety of subjects including standardizing spacecraft/payload interfaces, conceptual small spacecraft design, infrared signature target modeling, shuttle integration, and reentry vehicle operational risks.
To register for the 2012 WITI Women Powering Technology Summit or purchase tickets for the WITI Hall of Fame Awards dinner, please visit: www.witi.com/summit
For group table reservations and sponsorship opportunities at the 2012 WITI Women Powering Technology Summit please contact: Michele Weisblatt, Executive Vice President, WITI at 323-522-3125 / michele@corp.witi.com
About WITI
WITI is the world’s leading trade association for professional, tech-savvy women committed to using technology, resources and connections to advance women worldwide. With a global network of smart, talented leading women and a market reach exceeding 2 million, WITI has established powerful strategic alliances and programs to provide opportunities within a supportive environment of women committed to helping each other. WITI’s mission is to empower women worldwide to achieve unimagined possibilities and transformations through technology, leadership and economic prosperity. For more information please visit www.witi.com.
