The Google Europe Anita Borg Scholars and Finalists 2008

Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship Retreat 2008, 3rd-5th July, 2008, in Zurich, Switzerland.

As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to building and fostering a strong community of female engineers, Google awards the Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship to 20 outstanding European female Computer Science students.

Established in 2007 in Europe, the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship is awarded annually to female students. This year, the scholarship is also being extended to include Russia. “The Anita Borg Scholarship gives us the opportunity to attract and support talented young women, who are studying computer sciences and cybernetics in our region. I hope that this will help to increase the number of talented computer scientists, with whom we might work on challenging problems, related to our work in Google”, explains Jennifer Trelewicz, Google Director of Engineering for the Russian Federation.

295 students from 157 different universities across 31 European countries have applied for the 2008 award. Selection criteria included academic performance, leadership within the science and technology community, answers to four short essay questions and interviews with members of a review committee.

63 finalists were selected, of which 20 outstanding female Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD Computer Science students received the EUR 5,000 Scholarship for the 2008/2009 academic year. Google congratulates each of these leaders on their accomplishments!

The Europe Anita Borg scholars and finalists have been visiting the Google Engineering Centre in Zurich from 3rd – 5th July 2008 for a networking retreat, which included tech talks, career panels and social activities. Topics covered many areas from the technical – including user experience, graph theory, social networks and product engineering – to broader discussions on career choices and challenges in computer science. The annual Scholars’ Retreat provided an opportunity for all finalists to meet and share their experiences and create a community of leaders in the computer science field.

Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Recipients 2008

Cynthia Liem, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Despina Michael, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Dina Petri, University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Inbal Talgam, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Katy Howland, University of Sussex, UK
Kerstin Wendt, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Ksenia Rogova, Petrozavodsk State University, Russia
Mirela Ben-Chen, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Nadezhda Baldina, Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, Russia
Olga Boronenko, University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Patricia Moore, Dublin City University, Ireland
Rebecca Stewart, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Sara Adams, University of Oxford, UK
Seda Gürses, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Silvia Breu, University of Cambridge, UK
Siska Fitrianie, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Stefanie Jegelka, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany
Svetlana Obraztsova, Steklov Institute of Mathematics, Russia
Sylvia Rueda, University of Nottingham, UK
Ulyana Tikhonova, Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, Russia

Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Finalists 2008

Alma Yadira Quiñonez Carrillo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Ana Cristina Murillo Arnal, University of Zaragoza, Spain
Ana Lucia Varbanescu, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Anastasija Shakhshneider, Novosibirsk State University, Russia
Anna Astrakova, Novosibirsk State University, Russia
Anna Michalska, University of Warsaw, Poland
Anna Roubickova, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Anna Shlyaeva, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Russia
Birgit Schmidt, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Christina Pöpper, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland
Clare Hooper, University of Southampton, UK
Daria Yartseva, Moscow State University, Russia
Ekaterina Chelintseva, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Russia
Elena Smirnova, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia
Elisa Rondini, University College London, UK
Emma Burrows, University of Cambridge, UK
Emma Nilsson-Nyman, Lund University , Sweden
Ewa Gajda, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Fernanda Minku, University of Birmingham, UK
Gayathri Nadarajan, University of Edinburgh, UK
Iulia Ion, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland
Jenny Håkansson, Lund University, Sweden
Katerina Opocenska, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic
Leonor Frias, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Martina Lindorfer, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Moran Yassour, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Naomi Habib, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Nuzah Gooda Sahib, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Olga Rudenko, Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics, Belarus
Svetlana Olonetsky, Tel Aviv University , Israel
Tali Treibitz, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Tanya Starikovskaya, Moscow State University, Russia
Tatyana Batura, A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems, Russia
Tiina Lindh-Knuutila, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Uljana Reinsalu, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Vera Demberg, University of Edinburgh, UK
Yana Mileva, Saarland University, Germany
Yana Volkovich, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Yasmeen Ahmad, University of Dundee, UK
Zsuzsanna Püspöki, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary