Six new participants have been chosen to join the Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) program for SC24 – the annual International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, which will take place this year in Atlanta, GA.
WINS seeks to address the gender gap within the information technology industry, particularly in network engineering. Each year WINS funds highly qualified women, selected through a competitive application process, to join the conference’s SCinet team. SCinet is a global multi-terabit network created each year for the SC Conference and built from the ground up to support the revolutionary participant demos that have become the hallmark of the high-tech conference.
WINS strives to have a diverse representation of organizations and applicant backgrounds in the cohort each year and continues to receive highly competitive applications and the program continues to show strong interest and support.
The SC24 WINS awardees are:
- Starr Abdelhadi - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - joining the SCinet Network Security Team
- Sahana Aswathanarayan - National Renewable Energy Laboratory - joining the SCinet Edge Team
- Sunshine Baligit - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - joining the DevOps Team
- Rebecca Kingery - State of Nebraska/Office of the CIO - joining the Communications Team
- Drew Lasson - University of Utah - joining the SCinet Fiber Team
- Danielle Southerland - University of Pennsylvania - joining the SCinet Routing Team
The awardees are deeply immersed in a 6- to 9-month engineering experience before and during the SC conference while SCinet is operated live. Awardees are integrated into one of eighteen SCinet teams and are paired with a mentor to ensure a positive experience throughout the process.
When WINS was created in 2015, less than 14% of SCinet volunteers were women. Since then, that amount has tripled, with a significant number of the alumni ascending to SCinet management roles.
For example, Angie Asmus, an early WINS awardee, was selected among peers to serve as the SC24 Chair of SCinet, the top position a volunteer can hold on the SCinet committee. “It’s truly inspiring to witness the enduring success of WINS, and I extend my heartfelt congratulations to this year’s awardees on their well-deserved recognition. We eagerly anticipate integrating them into SCinet and their respective teams, where they’ll undoubtedly contribute significantly,” said Asmus. “Observing the trajectories of WINS alumni within SCinet and their professional journeys fills me with awe, and I’m confident this year’s awardees will find the experience as enriching as our former WINS awardees have. Leading SCinet alongside accomplished former WINS recipients, many now in pivotal positions is a true honor. Brenna Meade and Debbie Fligor, holding roles on the management team as Technical Director and Research Director, respectively, exemplify the transformative path from WINS to influential leadership. With eight more WINS alumni leading teams and numerous others returning as team members within SCinet, each of these remarkable women will be instrumental in ensuring the success of SCinet at SC24.”
In addition to the SCinet experience, WINS provides ongoing support and career development opportunities for awardees before, during, and after the conference. This includes monthly calls for the community of WINS alumni participants, which now tops 55 women.
WINS is a joint effort between the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), and Indiana University (IU). To date, financial support for the WINS program has come from a combination of funding, with the original core funding from the NSF (144064, 1640987 and 2129723) and additional funding from the joint partners as well as other contributors including: Ciena, Internet2, Northern Tier Network Consortium (NTNC), Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP), and The Quilt. Members of the WINS management team include Marla Meehl, UCAR; Kate Robinson and Jason Zurawski, ESnet; Brenna Meade and Heather Hubbard, Indiana University; and Wendy Huntoon, American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC);
