STEMinist did an interesting profile on Dr. Mary (María) Fernández, who currently works as Assistant Vice President, Information and Software Systems Research. She told STEMinist that she was attracted to the newness of computer science when she went to school:
My first professor was Andres van Dam, who is a luminary of computer science in the US. He was an astonishing, fantastic teacher, who said all sorts of crazy things, like everyone will have a computer in their home someday and computers will be so small we will carry them around in our pockets. At that time, computers were still the size of trucks, so these ideas seemed ludicrous, but also incredibly exciting. So I was hooked and changed my major to computer science.
Fernández received the 2011 Outstanding Technical Achievement-Industry award from HENAAC/Great Minds in STEM last year. She received her bachelor and Master’s degrees in computer science from Brown University and a Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton. She also works with MentorNet to help recruit women and minorities to pursue careers in science.
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Sara Inés Calderón is a journalist and writer who lives between Texas and California. Follow her on Twitter @SaraChicaD.
