 Live from Houston, Texas. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Houston, Texas. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host. Today our guest is Suzanne Matthews. She is an assistant professor of computer science at West Point. Welcome Suzanne. Thank you very much. So what's most exciting is that this is your 10th Grace Hopper Conference. Yes it is. You've been a decade of Grace Hoppers. So tell me about how the conference has changed over the years and what your impressions are of it this year. So this year looks like a really, really great conference. So when I first went to Grace Hopper, I actually started out as a scholarship recipient back at the 2007 Grace Hopper. That was in Orlando. And I was super isolated and I was kind of shy and I wasn't sure what I was gonna make of this but I had heard of this conference and it just completely changed my life. And how many people were there back in 2007? About 3,000. Okay, okay. I think we had about 3,000 people. Respectable? A respectable number and more women in computing that I had ever seen in my life. Where I went to undergrad, it was only 24% female at the institution itself. So coming to a conference and seeing 3,000 women who were as passionate about computing as I was was just absolutely a life changer because I wasn't alone and that's one of the great things about this conference. And now here today, it's 15,000 people. Yes, it's 15,000. We've really grown and it's just great to see all these new people who are interested and passionate about computing. We certainly have a workforce shortage in the United States. So I mean, this is really boating well for our country as a whole. And you said you began coming here as a scholarship recipient and now you're the co-chair of the scholarship committee. So what does that do? What is a Grace Hopper scholar? So a Grace Hopper scholar is really a special distinction, I would say because what a scholar gets is a free ride to Grace Hopper. Your registration is paid, your hotel is paid. Basically, you get reimbursed for expenses so travel is paid for and so it really is for many of the young students who come once in a lifetime opportunity to really get this experience. And more so now than it was back then because the conference has gotten so big it's kind of hard to get registrations. So for many people, this is one of their few opportunities. It's a real ticket to be in front of recruiters in front of universities. Right, so recruiters for sure but also to learn about different kinds of technologies and when you're a minority in this field, having the first look at something new, that is a conversation starter. That is an opportunity for you to get interested about things and potentially find an area of research. So the panel, you're speaking at a panel here and it is about cultivating more women in computer science academia. The numbers are depressing and bleak. Women comprise 20% of the faculty in computer science. Why is that? What accounts for this discrepancy? So computer science is a strange field because in the 1980s, I think we had about 35 to 40% women who were graduating as computer scientists and I think it was with the release of the personal microprocessor that in the personal computer that really computing started to shift to be a male dominated profession and I think we've never quite recovered from that and since men have always been at a higher representation in the faculty, it's been harder for young women to make inroads, especially when they find themselves as the only woman in their department and they constantly question if they actually belong there when none of their colleagues look like them. So back in the 1980s, as you said, with the dawn of having these personal home computers and it became a thing that the boys did because it was playing video games and a lot of the video games were shoot out bang bang not as interesting to young girls and so that really had a big effect in the 1980s in terms of women who went into it and thinkings. So now you are a female academic in computer science and as you've said, there are obstacles, there are barriers. How do you think about your career, manage your career in terms of making sure that you stay? So I've been very fortunate and it's partially because of this conference because I have mentors. Even if there aren't that many female colleagues even though I do have a few, I have so many others at different institutions. So if I run into a problem, I can call them up. I know that I am not alone and that was one of the big things that Grace Hopper in this conference taught me and because of that, it's not that bad. So talk about your research in terms of what you do at West Point, where your interest lies. So West Point is a four-year undergraduate co-educational institution. All of our students are also active duty military and so given that, we are not a very research-focused institution. However, one of my big goals as a faculty member is to introduce students to research so they have opportunities to go to graduate school and further their own interests. And the way I've done that at West Point is to really introduce them to parallel computing. Parallel computing, what is it? So parallel computing basically describes the programming of languages and of algorithms that can operate on modern architecture that have either multiple cores or large distributed networked systems. Okay, that is, break it down for me, Suzanne. Okay, so really when we talk about parallel execution, we're just talking about things executing simultaneously and it could execute simultaneously on the multiple compute cores of a computer. So it's just doing more things than one thing on your computer. It is doing more things than one thing. Okay, okay, okay. So you are introducing students to parallel computing and doing research in that area. And so then what is the upshot? Are your students going on and doing that? So I have had several students who've won national scholarships. Two, actually no, three now. Three of my students are MIT Lincoln Labs military fellows and their graduate students at Northeastern University. I have another student who won the National Science Fellowship Graduate Research Fellowship. She also won the CRA Undergraduate Research Award Outstanding Researcher Award. She won the National Physical Science Consortium Award. She's won a lot of awards. And so she's also a Churchill scholar and she's attending Cambridge University in that capacity. About your students. Yes. Are they interested in computer science in the sense that we don't think of the military as this bastion of computer science and yet it relies on technology. I mean, we are fighting technological wars today. It is, I mean. And so of course there's a lot of technology and where are your students thinking about? What is on their minds? So I mean, my students' interests are very, very diverse. I think the hot new thing right now is cybersecurity. As we produce more data, as we have a greater diversity in the kinds of computing devices, security is more and more coming to the forefront. And so we have a cyber branch, several of my students hope to join the cyber branch upon graduation. But of course, the military's history with computing goes much further back. So prior to the cyber branch, we've had a lot of students who go into military intelligence or the signal core, where they are protecting networks and actually working on projects that rely on computation to solve problems that are of interest to the military. And are your students, are there things like affinity groups at West Point in the sense of our students, particularly the women, maybe the women of color too, who are interested in computer science? Are they able to sort of get together and come to a conference like this or? Yes, actually. So one of my first things that I did when I was a faculty member is that I started EECS sisters, which is our ACMW chapter at West Point. Okay. And all of the women in our department are part of that, which is really great. Eight of my students are at the conference this year. I brought eight last year and I think 10 the year before. So every year we've managed to bring a number of our computing students to the conference. And how do you advise them? Because as you said, they are active military personnel. They could get called up, but they also are hopefully planning for careers beyond the military too. So how do you advise them in the sense of making sure that they are learning the right things to be competitive professionals in the job market? So to be competitive in the job market, I would argue that the same skills are necessary in order to make a good contribution to the problems that the military are interested in. So that's the focus I take. And I am not the only civilian faculty and I'm also not a military faculty member. So the military faculty will advise them more on the military aspects of things. And so I just want them to be strong computer scientists and hope that they know that they can always come and talk to me about whatever. And so just being a friendly face and always being willing to talk to them about, well, maybe you should put your resume together this way. You know, maybe you should apply for this opportunity. Let me help write letters of recommendation for you to graduate school. Those are ways in which I could actually help them. Suzanne, what is next for you? Are you working on any interesting research projects? Are you planning on writing books? Or what is up next for you? Well, hopefully tenure is up next. So I'm going up for promotion in a couple of years. So that's what I'm working toward mainly. But I am doing some interesting work with single board computers, which are these little clusters of raspberry pies or parallelas or other small devices that we're trying to explore if they can be used for certain computationally. Raspberry pies. Yes, yes. So I mean, that's one area of research I'm exploring right now. I also do a lot of work with CS in parallel, which is an NSF funded organization that tries to- National Science Foundation, yes. To try and inject more parallelism at the undergraduate level. So we have workshops over the summer that faculty could come to. We also run workshops at other conferences. So that's been a lot of fun. If you could advise the Grace Hopper committee for next year's Grace Hopper 2017, which will be your 11th Grace Hopper, what is the one thing you want to see next year? The one thing I want to see next year. Oh boy, that's hard because there's so much to see and do at this conference. I think I would like to see more tracks. Tracks, okay. So like we have three main areas. We have a data science. We have security. We have, I think an HCI track, but more diversity in the kinds of disciplinary things featured as tracks. Any one in particular. This is your chance, Suzanne. Grace Hopper is listening. Parallel computing, maybe? Parallel computing, okay, okay. So yes. Great, well Suzanne, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you very much for joining us. This has been Rebecca Knight here at the Grace Hopper Conference in Houston, Texas for theCUBE. We will, we're wrapping up today. So we'll see you tomorrow. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.