ORLANDO, FL. - There's still time to register for the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, which will be held Oct. 14-17 in Orlando, Florida, under the theme "Passion in Computing, Diversity in Innovation."

To date, more than 300 people have registered for this year's conference, putting the 2007 meeting on track to be the most successful since the series began in 2001. To register, go to: http://www.richardtapia.org/2007/travel.php.

This year's dynamic speakers from industry, academia, and research include Shirley Malcom, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs; Norman Johnson, chief scientist at Referentia Systems; John Leslie King, University of Michigan Vice Provost for Academic Information and a Professor in the School of Information; Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College; and Richard Tapia, University Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University.

Tapia 2007 will mark the inaugural Ken Kennedy Distinguished Lecture, to be given by Manuela Veloso, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Finally, in keeping with the conference's setting in Orlando, Anne Kuhns, Director of IT Security at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, will give the closing plenary talk.

The conference program also includes two-and-a-half days of technical presentations, a poster session featuring more than 25 research projects, and a number of panel discussions aimed at increasing the number and success of students from underrepresented groups in all areas of computing. For complete conference information, including a schedule and information on all the invited talks technical papers, panels and birds-of-a-feather sessions, see http://www.richardtapia.org/2007/.

About the Tapia Conference Series

Tapia 2007 is organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing and co-sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, in cooperation with the Computing Research Association.

The Tapia conference series honors the significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, University Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is internationally known for his research in computational and mathematical sciences and is a national leader in education and outreach programs. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books and more than 100 mathematical research papers. In addition to his academic positions, he is also Director of Rice's Center for Excellence and Equity in Education. This year's conference theme is "Passion in Computing, Diversity in Innovation."

The Tapia 2007 Conference enjoys the financial support of more than 30 academic, research and business organizations at several levels:

* Platinum Supporter: the National Science Foundation;

Gold Supporters: AMD, The Empowering Leadership Alliance: Computing Scholars of Tomorrow, Google, Microsoft, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Princeton University and the Rice-Houston Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate;

* Silver Supporters: College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, Hewlett Packard, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University, the University of California, Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and USENIX;

* Bronze Supporters: Auburn University, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University, Harvey Mudd College. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Center for Women and Information Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Computer Science at Tufts University and the University of Michigan.

* Contributors: IBM Research, iRobot, Northeastern University, Rochester Institute of Technology, the STARS Alliance, the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the University of South Florida.

For more information about the Tapia 2007 Conference, visit the Web site at http://www.richardtapia.org/2007/.
# # #