GW COMPUTER SCIENCE PROFESSOR RECEIVES 2005 LOVELACE AWARD FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN IN COMPUTING
By Matt Lindsay
The Association for Women in Computing (AWC) presented the 2005 Augusta Ada Lovelace Award to C. Dianne Martin, GW professor of engineering and applied science and chair of the Department of Computer Science, on April 16, 2005 in Bloomington, Minn. The award is given to individuals for outstanding scientific and technical achievement and/or extraordinary service to the computing community through their accomplishments and contributions on behalf of women in computing.
The Lovelace Award citation states that Martin was honored, "for exemplary dedication to improving computer education for all, for extraordinary leadership resulting in the inclusion of ethics and social impact in the computer science curriculum, and for an outstanding record of support for women and concern for children in computing."
In her acceptance speech, Martin spoke about the extra effort and struggles that women often face trying to succeed in science and technology fields. She described the importance of support from other female colleagues who had encouraged and helped her along her path, noting, "If women had invented the first computers, they would have been multi-processors from the beginning!"
Martin is the director of GW's Cyber Security Policy Research Institute, which promotes technical research and policy analysis of problems that have a significant computer security and information assurance component. She also is a fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), where she is the past chair of the ACM Special Interest Group in Computers and Society. Martin was the president and chairman of the board of the Recreational Software Advisory Council, a non-profit organization that provided content labels on computer games and Internet Web pages to help parents and teachers make informed decisions about media appropriate for children. The GW Engineers Council, a student group, and Eta Kappa Nu, the electrical engineering honorary society, have awarded Martin a total of seven "Teacher of the Year" awards as outstanding professor in computer science.
In fall of 2005 Martin will take a two-year leave of absence from GW to become dean of the College of Information Systems at Zayed University, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which was founded in 1998 to educate young women.
Martin received a B.A. in economics and mathematics education from McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College), an M.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland, and an Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction from The George Washington University. She has more than 30 years of experience in the computer field, including three years with IBM as a programmer on the Apollo space project, and 30 years of teaching at the university level.
Established by AWC in 1982, the Lovelace Award is named in honor of the first computer programmer, Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852), whose writings developed the idea of programming and explained the operation and theory of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. For more information about the Lovelace Award and The Association for Women in Computing, visit www.awc-hq.org.
