BZU participates in international conference for computing as a golden sponsor

A number of female students, teacher assistants and professors from the Computer Science Department participated in the fifth Annual International Conference on Arab Women in Computing (ARABWIC), held at the American University in Beirut.

ArabWIC is officially affiliated with the Anita Borg Institute (ABI), the Systers communities, and the Academic Computing Machinery Women in Computing (ACM-W). ArabWIC has forged important collaboration and partnerships with leading organizations in the Middle East such as ArabNet, Wamda, Stanford’s WIDs and the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI). 

The conference aims to support and inspire Arab women in various fields of computing, to link them with the global ecosystem of technology, and to enable them to achieve their professional aspirations. More than 500 male and female technology and computing researchers participated in the conference, giving interactive sessions, interactive technical workshops and professional training.

Birzeit University was included as one of the golden sponsors of the conference for its large number of participations. Four groups of computer science students presented their graduation projects as posters and two masters’ students presented their masters theses. The head of Computer Science Department Dr. Mamoun Nawahdah and the professor of Computer Science Dr. Nariman Ammar, presented research papers on computing in cooperation with a number of teaching assistants.

Yaman Kandah who presented her project "Video Summarization using High-Level Visual Concepts" with her colleagues Saja Al-Junaidi and Tala Al-Tarazi, was awarded a prize for the best poster.

Dr. Nawahdeh stressed on the regional and global importance of the conference, in light of its contribution to empowering the role of Arab women in this vital field, demonstrating their energy and changing stereotypes that diminish the importance of women in the technology sector, highlighting their success stories and ways of overcoming the challenges they face.

Expressing his pride in the University team, Nawahdeh stated that their participation has enriched the conference. The team, who received the award of the most participating team in the conference, reflected the university’s position and ability to compete in the technology sector.

Dr. Ammar pointed out to Birzeit's significant contribution to the conference's program. "We placed no. 1 in poster session and we had 2 workshops 5 posters and 3 research presentations. I was on two panels and chaired several sessions. We participated in a design-thinking workshop.”

She assured that the conference’s goals match those of Birzeit’s regarding the support of female students and their contribution to research and the workforce, especially in computing. “Professor Sana Odeh’s invitation comes in line with our mission that puts women’s integration in the forefront and investing them through many initiatives.”

As member of the ArabWIC leadership committee for the research track Dr. Ammar, expressed the university’s commitment to encourage more talented female students to participate in the upcoming ARABWIC Conference that will be held in Morocco in 2019. “We are committed to support our women. We are working on building partnerships with academic and non-academic institutions, especially those related to the STEM field (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics).”