<div>High Performance Woman<br>HPC Wire (10/20/06) Vol. 15, No. 42,<br><br>Maria Eleftheriou, a researcher at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, is the only female on her research team. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>She has contributed in many areas, including programming models, parallel algorithms, parallel architecture, and analyzing the performance of parallel scientific applications for the Blue Gene/L architecture. Eleftheriou is also working in collaboration with others on large scale simulation studies of various biochemical mechanisms. Her favorite aspect of her work is the prospect of her research projects being "incorporated into applications." Although trained in theoretical physical chemistry, she began work in high-performance computing as an opportunity to "broaden [her] technical skills and to learn new tools needed to tackle scientific problems using HPC."
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Eleftheriou is on the Watson Women's Network committee at IBM research, where she helps with activities that "promote opportunities for women in the workplace." The committee also "organiz[es] talks on a spectrum of topics and organiz[es] roundtable events with executives as well as providing a venue for business topics of interest to women." She is also involved in undergraduate education: giving talks and appearing on panels to encourage students to continue studies in science and engineering into graduate school. Her view on women in the field of supercomputing is that they "are a long way away from attaining gender equality...women still represent a small fraction of the researchers in this field and this is unlikely to change soon."
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>She says IBM is very involved in discussing the "underlying issues that present barriers to women who choose scientific or engineering career paths." Her advice to anyone interested in succeeding in this field, especially young women, is to "get out of you comfort zone and seek out new challenges."
<br><br>Read on, for an interview with Maria: <a href="http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/997019.html">http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/997019.html</a><br> </div>