Carnegie Mellon faculty members Manuela Veloso, Marlene Behrman and Lenore Blum will share their insights on computer science research with undergraduate women at the OurCS workshop Oct. 24–25.

Chandra Dhandapani, senior vice president and divisional chief information officer for the Financial Services Division of Capital One, one of the major sponsors for the workshop along with Oracle, will give the opening talk.

OurCS (Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in Computer Science) gives young women from across the nation and overseas an opportunity to learn about computer science research by doing. They work in teams on projects guided by scientists from academia and industry and then present their findings.

Despite the growing importance of computation in society and in the sciences in general and a steady demand by employers for computer scientists, U.S. enrollments for women in computer science programs have lagged. OurCS is designed to help undergraduates gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and rewards of computer science research.

"This will be an intense weekend of problem-solving for these undergraduates," said Carol Frieze, OurCS chair and director of Women @ SCS, an organization that promotes opportunities for women in the School of Computer Science. "Thanks to our speakers, panelists and research team leaders it should also be an inspirational event for us all."

OurCS is sponsored by Capital One, Oracle and a number of CMU entities: Carnegie Mellon Qatar, the Computer Science Department, the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, the Machine Learning Department, the Institute for Software Research, the Computational Biology Department, the Robotics Institute and Women @ SCS.