WINS Brings a strong and diverse cohort of SC23 Participants
(Boulder, CO - April 10, 2023) Six new participants have been chosen to join the Women in IT
Networking at SC (WINS) program for SC23 – the annual International Conference for High
Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis which will take place this year in
Denver, CO.
Created in 2015, WINS seeks to address the gender gap within the information technology
industry, particularly in network engineering. Each year WINS funds highly qualified women,
selected through a competitive application process, to join the conference’s SCinet team. SCinet
is a global multi-terabit network created each year for the SC Conference and built from the
ground-up to support the revolutionary participant demos that have become the hallmark of
the high-tech conference.
WINS strives to have diverse representation of organizations and applicant backgrounds in the
cohort each year. WINS continues to receive highly competitive applications and the program
continues to show strong interest and support.
The SC23 WINS awardees are:
●Brittany Huff - Purdue University - joining the SCinet Network Security Team
●Shannen McKenna - Univ. of California, Davis - joining the SCinet Network Security Team
●Hallie Mull - Bucknell University - joining the SCinet Routing Team
●Suzanne Prentice - Oak Ridge National Laboratory - joining the SCinet DevOps Team
●Pauline Sawadogo - Clemson University - joining the SCinet Edge Team
●Alysha Toya - Jemez Health and Human Services - joining the SCinet Edge Team
The awardees are deeply immersed in a 6–9-month engineering experience before and during
the SC conference while SCinet is operated live. Awardees are integrated into one of over fifteen
SCinet teams and are paired with a mentor to ensure a positive experience throughout the
process.
“WINS helps to address the gender gap in information technology, especially in networking
technology and High Performance Computing (HPC). Through WINS, the talented group of early
to mid-career women engineers and technologists have a unique opportunity for direct access
to cutting edge network technology working side-by-side with the SCinet volunteers, including
the world’s leading network and software engineers from academia, government, and industry,
to design and create SCinet. The women who participate in WINS are empowered to thrive and
achieve success in their chosen career. “ - Forough Ghahramani , EdD, Assistant Vice President
for Research, Innovation, and Sponsored Programs
New Jersey Edge
When WINS was created in 2015, less than 14% of SCinet volunteers were women. Since then,
that amount has tripled with a significant number of the alumni ascending to SCinet
management roles such as Angie Asmus from Colorado State University.
As one of the original WINS awardees, Amus was selected among peers to serve as the SC24
Chair of SCinet, the top position a volunteer can hold on the SCinet committee. “WINS was
initially started to close the gender gap, but it has become so much more. The opportunity
WINS has given me, and other ladies involved in SCinet has been pivotal in our careers. It has
provided hands-on networking experience, public-speaking practice, a trusted community, and
leadership opportunities that have opened the doors for many of us to advance in our careers.
Seeing WINS participants grow and develop into leaders in SCinet and their home institutions is
exciting. I would not have had the career advancement or the opportunity to lead the great
SCinet organization without my experience in WINS. I’m excited to lead all of the SCinet
volunteers, especially the WINS participants and alumni at SC24.”
In addition to the SCinet experience, WINS provides ongoing support and career development
opportunities for awardees before, during, and after the conference. This includes monthly calls
for the community of WINS alumni participants which now tops 45 women.
WINS is a joint effort between the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the
Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), and Indiana University. To date,
financial support for the WINS program has come from a combination of funding, with the
original core funding from the NSF (144064, 1640987 and 2129723) and additional funding from
the joint partners as well as other contributors including: : NREL, Internet2, Ciena, Meta,
Juniper, KINBER, Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP), Northern Tier Network Consortium
(NTNC), The Quilt and Purdue University. Members of the WINS management team include
Marla Meehl and Scott Baily of UCAR; Kate Robinson and Jason Zurawski of ESnet; Brenna
Meade from Indiana University; Wendy Huntoon of AIHEC; and Kimball Sekaquaptewa with
Santa Fe Indian School.
