Anita Borg

...Founding Director of The Institute of Women and Technology. Founded in 1987. IWT supported and funded by Xerox. Her goals for the institute are threefold: bring nontechnical women into the design process; encourage more women to become scientists; and help the industry, academia, and the government accelerate these changes. The institute has already received $150,000 in funding from Xerox and Sun, as well as personnel and resources from Lotus (now a division of IBM), Boston University, and Carnegie Mellon University. Xerox is acting as an "incubator" for the institute, which is otherwise independent.. Anita: At IWT, we think that women must be involved in every aspect of defining the future of technology, from policy to research to design and implementation. We must be there in order to assure that the technology of the future serves us well...

...Member of Research Staff, Xerox PARC...

...Presidental Commision on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science. In 1999, President Clinton appointed Anita to the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology. charged with recommending strategies to the nation for increasing the breadth of participation fields...

...Ms. Borg is one of a relatively small group of female computer scientists at the Ph.D. level. After getting her doctorate in computer science from New York University in 1981, she worked for several computer companies and then spent 12 years in Digital Equipment's labs. She is well known among other female computer scientists for having created a list server for female engineers, called Systers, and for founding a technical conference for women, called the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. ...

...In 1987 while attending a major industry conference, she realized there were only a handful of women attending. She pulled that small group together and started Systers, an e-mail list and information-sharing community providing mentors, support and encouragement to women in computing. Today, Systers has grown to include over 2,500 women in 38 countries...

...In 1986, she joined Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory. Developed and patented a method for generating complete address traces used for analyzing and designing high-speed memory systems...

...recieved the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing for her work on behalf of women in the computing field. The Lovelace award was given in 1995 to Dr. Anita Borg. An internationally recognized expert on computer operating systems, she is a consultant engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation's Network Systems Laboratory in Palo Alto with primary responsibility for the MECCA Communications And Information Systems project. Dr. Borg has received awards and recognition from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Girl Scouts and Open Computing Magazine's "Top 100 Women In Computing." She is founder and head of the 2000 member Systers List, an electronic forum for professional women in computing and computer science. She organized and led the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing, in Washington D.C. in June, 1994....

...Friends of Ms. Borg's describe her as passionate and energetic. She mountain-bikes, flies small planes, and kayaks in the rare moments when she's not working. In January she threw herself a big 50th birthday bash with a loud rock band. She says she has always loved math and science, an interest she attributes to her mother. "My mother taught me that math was fun, so I thought it could be," she says...

...The cause was brain cancer, her family said. Sunday April 6th... (1949-2003)