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VIBHA SAZAWAL
Computer Science and Engineering

 Ms. Vibha Sazawal is focused on creating highly technical tools that help software engineers evaluate their existing program code according to design criteria of interest. Vibha also has a strong commitment to community service and is dedicated to encouraging underrepresented minorities and women to pursue academic studies and careers in computer science and engineering, and has worked to design interventions to address problems of under representation of minorities and women in engineering.

A portion of Ms. Sazawal's personal statement:

"Universities are factories, and the product that universities produce is the future.  The innovations, cures, and theories of tomorrow are being created to day in university labs.  The leaders, thinkers, and doers of tomorrow are being taught today in university classrooms.  The dreamers of tomorrow are children watching demonstrations at university open houses.  The University of Washington is at the forefront of this production of the future, and it is no wonder then that the UW upholds a tripartite mission of research teaching, and service.  The future rests on all three.

The future can best fulfill its promise when we champion one principle:  inclusion.  An essential cornerstone of American society is democracy; all American are assured their right to participate in determining our political future.  But what about our scientific future, our technical future?  Is there an equivalent assurance of rights and participation?  Our technical future is largely in the hands of universities, and thus it is our duty as academicians in technical areas to strive for the inclusion of all Americans in this creation of our future.  To do otherwise, to leave the decisions about the future of science and engineering in the hands of a few, is to blemish American democracy.  Fortunately, there are many visionaries at the University of Washington who strive to both draw a diverse population into our university and take the ideas from our university out into the world.  I am grateful the opportunity to collaborate with my talented colleagues as we passionately aim to meet our three goals of research, teaching, and service.

In the past few years I have learned a great deal about women and minority students and their impressions of mathematics and computer science.  While I cannot say that my observations at the middle school level, high school level, and college level generalize to all students, I can state that my personal observations corroborate strongly with what the literature says.  It is no stretch to state that there exist deep stereotypes about what computer science and math is and the type of person who does computer science and math.  Deep anxieties about computers that stem from lack of computer usage also exit.   Family responsibilities, even for children, limit the amount of time that students can spend exploring time-intensive activities such as computer programming.

I have seen many sparks in my interventions--from those as fundamental as a cry of "I want to come here!", said by an African American girl who had never seen UW, to "Wow, how many computer languages do you think there are?", said by a high school girl pondering the idea of speaking to a machine for the first time.  These sparks motivate me to continue."

Statement about the work that Ms. Sazawal has done:

"Specific programs she has either solely created and presented or been a principle creator and presenter include two 2003 workshops that introduced computer science concepts to dozens of high school girls, a 2003 de3partment presentation of computer concepts and hardware to over 50 middle school minority students, a multi-year program that presented the mathematical building blocks for computer science and other science and engineering disciplines to dozens of middle school minorities in their classrooms, and uncountable other events both on campus and in public schools that positively presented computer science to hundreds of additional young people who typically would not consider our field."

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