Busy Year, Exciting Events and News!

2016 has been a rewarding year for the Saudi chapter in ArabWIC. We are excited to share with our blog readers some exciting events that the team has been busy planning for. As all women in the field realize how it is very important to represent and participate with each other all around the world, this year the Saudi chapter is going international!

The end of September the ArabWiC Saudi chapter participated in the ACM Celebration Event at the Rocky Mountain Celebration of Women in Computing in Salt Lake City, Utah http://rmcwic.org/. On behalf of the team, Asma Aljuhani presented the Saudi chapter and important statistics of the field, specifically the contribution of women in tech in the region. Great job Asma!

Another exciting upcoming event is, Grace Hopper http://ghc.anitaborg.org ! The biggest event for celebrating women in computing, and this year ArabWIC is going big! The Saudi chapter is contributing with 3 participations.  Dr.Amana Alshawi from KACST is presenting her work in Organizational Transformation: Leading Change to Increase Women’s Inclusion in Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. In addition to that, she is also chairing 2 sessions. Dr.Areej Awabil is  also charing two sessions in the HCI Track: 1- Creating Natural User Interactions (Microsoft) and 2- The HCI track session.

In addition to contributing to the knowledge at the event, the Saudi chapter encouraged aspiring members to attend and participate. The chapter leadership sought funding for all chapter leaders and whomever reached out to the chapter from Saudi students studying in the USA. We were successful in securing funding for our chapter leadership and in guiding students to funding opportunities abroad. We also encouraged ArabWIC community members to submit proposals for talks, panels and workshops. Not all applications were accepted but it was a learning experience for our members.

Those two events were in the pipeline and brewing and we wanted to share what exciting stuff been going on to keep all of our readers updated! We hope to see some of you there at the upcoming events!