Internationally renowned mathematician and computer scientist Lenore Blum will discuss “Transforming the Culture of Computing: The Carnegie Mellon Experience” at 4 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, in the Welles-Brown Room in Rush Rhees Library on the University of Rochester’s River Campus.
Blum will review how, in the 1990s, Carnegie Mellon University bucked the trend of declining numbers of women in computer science. She will discuss program changes that increased the participation of women in information technology at the graduate level and beyond at the university, and the ideas and implications for other venues. Her talk is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.
At Carnegie Mellon, Blum is Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and director of Women @SCS (School of Computer Science). She is well known for her work increasing the participation of women in scientific fields. She was instrumental in founding the Association for Women in Mathematics and the Math/Science Network and its Expanding Your Horizons conferences for middle and high school girls.
Blum received her doctorate in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968 and was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1973, she joined the faculty of Mills College, where she founded the mathematics and computer science department and was awarded the first Letts-Villard Chair.
In 1988, she joined the newly formed International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley, where she also served as deputy director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. She was a visiting professor at City University of Hong Kong for two years before joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1999.
Blum’s research has moved from early studies in model theory and differential fields to developing theories of computation over real numbers. She has given numerous invited talks at international conferences, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is co-author of the book Complexity and Real Computation.
Her visit is part of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies Speaker Series and will include meetings with students at the University of Rochester. For more information, call (585) 275-8318. Blum will also be appearing at Rochester Institute of Technology while in Rochester.