Northeastern University (2022-present)
Teaching Professor, Khoury College of Computer Sciences
Courses taught: Fudamentals of Computer Science 1-2
Mills College (1998-2022)
CodePath
Mozilla (September 2019-June 2020)
Development environments: Designed, implemented, and documented key parts of App Inventor for Android, an online drag-and-drop development environment for creating Android apps, while employed by Google and subsequently as a volunteer on the open source project (January 2009-present).
Social software: Contributed features to the Orkut social network, including a recommender system, and developed ad placements for social networks, Google (January 2004-January 2009). Designed, built, and maintained the Systers-mailman extensions to the Systers email list, Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology (2000-2004).
Software agents: Designed and developed software to automatically recognize insulting or abusive email, applying natural-language processing and machine-learning techniques, Microsoft Research (May 1995-September 1995).
Compilers: Helped design and implement App Inventor for Android, a visual programming environment enabling non-programmers to create applications for mobile phones, Google (January 2009-present). Combined novel instruction scheduling and register allocation for a highly-optimizing compiler, Microsoft Research (Summer 1993, February 1994-May 1995). Developed compilers for a massively parallel computer, MIT (1989-1992). Designed and added optimizations to production compiler for switch statement code generation, Microsoft (Summer 1988).
Architectural evaluation: Evaluated the massively-parallel MIT J-Machine and Thinking Machines CM-5, MIT (1989-1993). Constructed a system to analyze instruction traces for instruction-level parallelism (Summer 1990) and built a microprocessor simulator (Summer 1989), Microsoft.
Alumni Achievement Award, New Trier High School, Winnetka, Illinois, 2024.
Faculty Marshal, Mills College, 2021-2022.
Kilgore-Snyder Professorship, Mills College, 2018-2021.
Principal Investigator (PI), A Relational Database Interface to the World-Wide Web, National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development grant ($200,000), April 1999 - December 2004.
Co-PI, Techbridge, National Science Foundation PGE/LCP grant ($900,000), September 2000 - August 2004.
Fellow, Cultural Competence in Computing Program, Duke University, Spring 2021.
Winner, Women Who Dare Award, Girls Inc. of the Island City, 2007.
Trefethen Award ($5,000) for "outstanding teaching, curricular innovation, scholarship and college and/or community service", Mills College, 2005-2006.
One of the ABCNews.com Top Ten Wired Women of 2002.
Sexiest Geek Alive, 2001.
Fellow, Intel Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1995-1996.
Winner, Department Meritorious Service Award, MIT EECS, 1992, for compiler seminar.
Winner, Morris Joseph Levin Memorial Award for independent work by an undergraduate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, 1991, for "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?"
Graduate fellow, National Science Foundation.
Winner, Undergraduate Computer Systems Prize, MIT, 1990, for bachelor's thesis.
Co-winner, best paper, 1990 MIT-ACM Undergraduate Computer Conference, for a paper on compiler optimizations developed while at Microsoft.
Member, Eta Kappa Nu.
App Inventor 2 by David Wolber, Hal Abelson, Ellen Spertus, and Liz Looney. O'Reilly Media, October 2014. Available for free online at http://www.appinventor.org/book2. The book has been translated into Spanish, Czech, and Chinese. The first edition was published in May, 2011.
"Professor in a Circuit-Board Corset" (book chapter) in She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff, ed. by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, Sage Press, 2006. I appeared at book readings at Modern Times Book Store (February 1, 2007), Mills College (April 9, 2007), and Google (July 20, 2007) [video].
"Interactive Asynchronous Online Computer Architecture Education", Workshop on Computer Architecture Education, June 17, 2021.
"Mastery-Based Learning in Undergraduate Computer Architecture", with Zachary Kurmas, Workshop on Computer Architecture Education, June 17, 2021.
"Evaluating Similarity Measures: A Large Scale Study in the Orkut Social Network" (short paper), with Mehran Sahami and Orkut Buyukkokten, Eleventh ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, August 2005.
"Dynamic Sublists: Scaling Unmoderated Mailing Lists", with Robin Jeffries and Kiem Sie, Fifteenth System Administration Conference (LISA), December 2001.
"Scalable Online Communities with Javamlm" (short paper), with Robin Jeffries and Kiem Sie, World Conference on the WWW and Internet (WebNet), October 2001.
"Squeal: Structured Queries on the Web", Ninth International World-Wide Web Conference, May 2000, with Lynn Andrea Stein. Also appearing in Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking, Volume 33, Issues 1-6, June 2000.
"A Hyperlink-Based Recommender System Written in Squeal", CIKM '98 Workshop on Web Information and Data Management (WIDM'98), November 6, 1998 with Lynn Andrea Stein.
"Just-In-Time Databases and the World-Wide Web", Seventh International ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, November 1998, with Lynn Andrea Stein.
"The J-Machine: A Retrospective", 25 Years of Selected Papers from the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, 1998, by William J. Dally et al.
"Smokey: Automatic Recognition of Hostile Messages," Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI) '97. Also presented at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse, July 31, 1998.
"Squeal: SQL Access to Information on the Web", AAAI-98 Workshop on AI and Information Integration.
"Mining the Web's Hyperlinks for Recommendations", AAAI-98 Workshop on Recommender Systems, with Lynn Andrea Stein.
"ParaSite: Mining Structural Information on the Web," The Sixth International World Wide Web Conference, April 1997. Also appearing in Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking 29 (1997) 1205-1215. A German translation "Informationssuche im Internet" appeared in Computerworld [Switzerland], August 3, 1998.
"Link Geometry and Crawling on Demand," Distributed Indexing/Searching Workshop, World Wide Web Consortium, May 1996, with Gregory Lauckhart.
"Evaluating the Locality Benefits of Active Messages," Proceedings of the Fifth ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, with William J. Dally, 1995.
"Evaluation of Mechanisms for Fine-Grained Parallel Programs in the J-Machine and the CM-5," International Symposium in Computer Architecture, 1993, with Seth Goldstein, Klaus Schauser, Thorsten von Eicken, David Culler, and Bill Dally. Also appearing in Laxmi Bhuyan and Xiaodong Zhang, eds., Multiprocessor Performance Measurement and Evaluation, IEEE Computer Society, 1994.
"The J-Machine: A Fine-Grain Parallel Computer," Computing Systems in Engineering, 1992, by William J. Dally et al.
"Experiences Implementing Dataflow on a General-Purpose Parallel Computer," 1991 International Conference on Parallel Processing, with William J. Dally.
"Dataflow Computation for the J-Machine," MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab Technical Report 1233, June 1990. (Bachelor's thesis, Department of EECS, MIT.)
"News from ACM-W Celebrations" (uncredited coverage of the Tech Intersections conference), ACM-W Connections, March 2018.
"Tech Inclusion SF 2017" by Ellen Spertus, Noteworthy - The Journal Blog, October 25, 2017.
"New Q&A Site for CS Teachers" by Ellen Spertus, Voice, Volume 13, Issue 4 (September 2017). Voice is a publication of the Computer Science Teachers Association.
"Strategies for Creating Equitable and Effective Classrooms: Lessons from Feminism" by Ellen Spertus, Judy Goldsmith, and Colleen Lewis, CRA-Women Newsletter, Summer/Fall 2016. An expanded version appears on Medium.
Anita's Quilt: Systerhood and Feminism" by Ellen Spertus, September 13, 2012. Anita's Quilt was a project of AnitaB.org.
"Scarcity of Women in Computing" in Wiley Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering, ed. by Benjamin Wah, 2009.
"Gender Online: Theory and Practice" (symposium report), Asian Women, Vol. 14 (2002), pp. 213-218.
"Developing a Hardware and Programming Curriculum for Middle School Girls" by Jeri Countryman, Alegra Feldman, Linda Kekelis, and Ellen Spertus. Inroads -- SIGCSE Bulletin (Special Issue on Women and Computing), Vol. 4, No. 2 (June 2002).
"Leveraging an Alternative Source of Computer Scientists: Reentry Programs" by Sheila Humphreys and Ellen Spertus. Inroads -- SIGCSE Bulletin (Special Issue on Women and Computing), Vol. 4, No. 2 (June 2002).
"Women and Computing" by Ellen Spertus and Denise Gurer. Encyclopedia of Computer Science. Ralston, Anthony; Reilly, Edwin D.; and Hemminger David, eds. Fourth edition. Nature Publishing Group (U.K) and Grove Dictionaries (U.S.), 2000.
"Wit Helps Women in Computer Science Combat Ignorance", Women in Higher Education, May 1997. Reprinted in Shatter the Glass Ceiling, December 1997; reprinted in The CPSR Newsletter, Winter 2000; and reprinted as "Gender Benders" inInroads -- SIGCSE Bulletin (Special Issue on Women and Computing), Vol. 4, No. 2 (June 2002).
"Social and Technical Means for Fighting On-Line Harassment," Virtue and Virtuality: Gender, Law, and Cyberspace, April 1996.
"Declaration of Stephen Donaldson" (unnamed co-author), Affidavit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, ACLU et al. v. Reno (No. 96-963) & American Library Association et al v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 96-1458). March 17, 1996.
"Women and Computing." Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering. Ralston, Anthony and Edwin D. Reilly, eds. Third edition. Van Nostrand Reinhold: New York, 1993.
"Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?" MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Technical Report 1315, August 1991. This report has been widely distributed in the computer science community, including to all of the faculty, staff, and graduate students in computer science at the University of California at Berkeley by department head Prof. David Patterson. A summary appeared in the Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter (March-April 1992), and a chapter was reprinted in the Australian Computer Society Victorian Bulletin (July, August 1992). The report (or other of my writings on the subject) is recommended or required reading in courses at MIT, Smith College, and The University of Texas.
Workshop leader, Autograding Java Assignments in Gradescope with Jacquard, SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Portland, Oregon, March 20, 2024.
Lighting speaker and participant, Equitable Grading Community of Practice Meeting,Portland, Oregon, March 20, 2024.
Speaker, "Innovative Applications of a Gradescope Autograder", Illinois Computer Science Summer Teaching Workshop, June 5, 2023.
Panelist, "Teaching to Transgress in Computing: Faculty
Perspectives on Developing Identity-Inclusive Computing
Courses", The Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained
Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology
(RESPECT), May 23-24, 2022.
Panelist, "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (COVID-19
edition)", SIGCSE Technical Symposium, March 3, 2022.
Panelist, "Work and College in a Zoom Era", Section Leader Learning Week, Code in Place, May 29, 2021.
RAT Speaker, "Computer Architecture in the Time of COVID", Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop, April 29, 2021.
Moderator and Organizer, "Anti-Black Algorithmic Bias on Health, Elections, and Society", Technology and Society Series, Mills College, April 21, 2021. Panelists: Moon Duchin, Melody Ivory, and Ziad Obermeyer.
Speaker, "Introducing CS Students to Open Source" [video], Inclusion & Diversity in Open Source, All Things Open, October 19, 2020.
Panelist, "Education and Open Source", Inclusion & Diversity in Open Source, All Things Open, October 19, 2020.
Interviewee, Systers Tech Talk: Go Behind the Scenes with Tech Intersections, AnitaB.org, March 22, 2018.
Moderator and panelist, "Strategies for Creating Equitable and Effective Classrooms: Lessons from Feminism", Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Houston, TX, October 16, 2015.
Moderator and panelist, "Protecting Yourself from Workplace Mistreatment", Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Houston, TX, October 14, 2015.
Panelist, "Fostering the Next Generation - pipeline into CS", CRA-W CAPP Advanced Career Mentoring Workshop, San Francisco, CA, November 17, 2012.
Panelist, "Representing Yourself Outward", CRA-W CAPP Advanced Career Mentoring Workshop, San Francisco, CA, November 16, 2012.
Panelist, "Faculty Panel", Women in Science and Engineering Freshman Seminar, University of California, Berkeley, October 31, 2011.
Panelist and organizer, "Mastering the Art of the Technical Interview", Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, October 1, 2010.
Panelist, "For the Love of Teaching: Experiences of Undergraduate Liberal Arts College Faculty", Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, October 1, 2010.
Panelist and organizer, "Creating Mobile Phone Applications and Motivating Females in CS with Google’s App Inventor for Android", Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, September 30, 2010.
Workshop organizer and leader, "App Inventor for Android: A Visual Programming Environment for Creating Mobile Phone Apps", Computer Science & Information Technology Symposium, Mountain View, California, July 13, 2010.
Workshop organizer and presenter, "Creating Mobile Phone Applications with App Inventor for Android", Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2010), Milwaukee, March 12, 2010. [Provided video presentation because unable to attend in person.]
Panelist and organizer, "Novel Approaches to CS 0 with App Inventor for Android", Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2010), Milwaukee, March 12, 2010. [Provided video presentation because unable to attend in person.]
Panelist, "Dual Careers or Dueling Careers? Jobs and the Two-Body Problem", Joint Meeting of the Mathematical Association of America and The American Mathematical Society, San Francisco, January 13, 2010.
Panelist, "Faculty Panel", Women in Science and Engineering Freshman Seminar, University of California, Berkeley, November 2, 2009.
Panelist, "Mastering the Art of the Technical Interview: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Tucson, October 2, 2009.
Invited participant, "Rebooting Computing Summit: The Magic and Beauty of Computer Science", January 12-14, 2009.
Moderator, "Women in Science and Technology: Challenges and Changes Through the Generations" (panel), sponsored by the Association of MIT Alumnae of Northern California and Google, Mountain View, September 20, 2007.
Invited participant, Integrative Computing Education & Research: Preparing IT Graduates for 2010 and Beyond (ICER - West), Stanford, California, January 27-28, 2006.
Panelist, "Flame, Blame and Shame", BlogHer Conference, Santa Clara, July 30, 2005.
Panelist, "Women and Girls in Math, Science, and Technology", Girls Incorporated of the Island City Women of the 21st Century Club Speaker Event, Alameda, CA, July 19, 2005.
Panelist, "Managing the Academic Career for Faculty Women at Undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering Institutions", CRA-W, St. Louis, February 23, 2005.
Panelist, "What We Can Learn from Computer Science's Differences from other Sciences", Women, Work and the Academy: Strategies for Responding to 'Post-Civil Rights Era' Discrimination, Barnard College, New York, December 9-10, 2005.
Organizer and panelist, "It's Never Too Late: Careers in Computer Science", Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and Google, Mountain View, CA, June 2, 2004.
Panelist, "The Job Search Process and Later Job-related Decision Making", CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop, San Diego, June 6-8, 2003.
Panel chair, Surging into the Pipeline: Re-entry Programs for Women in Computing, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2002.
Panelist, UNESCO Chair Conference on Women's Cyber Rights, Research Institute of Asian Women, Seoul, Korea, May 31, 2002.
Invited participant, IDM 2002 Workshop, NSF, May 5-7, 2002.
Panelist, "Women AND Technology: Changing the future for both", Xerox PARC Forum, December 13, 2001.
Panelist, "Issues in Higher Education", Women Leading the Way in Science, Engineering, Technology, Arts and Creativity, Women's Leadership Institute, Mills College, October 19, 2001.
Panelist, "Techbridge: A Technology Program of Their Own", with Linda Kekelis, Jeri Countryman, and Alegra Feldman; The Eighth Annual National Diversity Conference: Race, Gender and Information Technology: Closing the Digital Divide, San Diego, May 2-5, 2001.
"A relational database interface to the World-Wide Web" (poster), with Lynn Andrea Stein, Proceedings of the Fourth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries, 1999.
Panelist, "Mentoring and Graduate School", Beyond the Classroom: A Workshop for Undergraduates in EE & CS, University of California, Berkeley, September 26, 1998.
"Information Hierarchies," 1995 MIT Student Workshop on Scalable Computing.
Debate, "Resolved: That to exploit advances in parallel processing technology, Fortune 500 companies should invest in networks of distributed workstations instead of parallel computers", 1994 MIT Student Workshop on Scalable Computing.
"Trading Off Control and Data Locality in Fine-Grained Computing", 1994 MIT Student Workshop on Scalable Computing.
Panelist, "A Look at Climate Issues and Gender Fair Education", Massachusetts Winter Conference, American Association of University Women, Concord, MA, January 29, 1994.
Panelist, "Creating an Empowering Environment for Women Students in Undergraduate, Co-Ed Computer Science Programs," Twenty-Fourth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, February 1993.
Invited participant, Workshop on Expanding Opportunities for Women in CISE, National Science Foundation, October 1992.
Invited witness, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, June 24, 1992.
"Dataflow Computation on the J-Machine," 1991 MIT Student Workshop on VLSI and Parallel Systems, July 1991.
"Best Practices for Writing Code Comments", The Overflow, July 5, 2021
"My Most Embarrassing Mistakes as a Programmer (so far)", The Overflow, October 29, 2019.
"Orkut trends", a series of Orkut Blog (Google) posts with Torsten Nelson, September 26, 2007; November 21, 2007; January 22, 2008; February 8, 2008; and March 25, 2008.
"Too Much Information", a series of Orkut Media (Google) columns about Orkut users, January 19, February 2, March 9, March 30, April 20, 2005.
Laptop computer review, Glamour, November 2004, p. 170.
"On the Prowl: How Search Engines Mine the Web", Odyssey: Adventures in Science, September 2004, pp. 14-17.
"Of Flames, Fan Mail, and Software That Can Tell the Difference", Chronicle of Higher Education, August 18, 2000, p. B6.
"Lost in Cyberspace" (Review of Mark Dery's Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century), Technology Review, April 1997.
"The Emperor's Virtual Clothes" (Review of Mark Slouka's War of the Worlds), Technology Review, April 1996.
"Filtering the Net" (How technology allows users to filter their reading material on-line), Technology Review, October 1995.
Co-founder and co-organizer, Tech Intersections, 2017-present.
Program committee member, Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), 2022, 2024.
Section leader (online instructor), Code in Place, 2021, 2023.
Volunteer, Girls Who Code Summit, Pleasanton Middle School, March 7, 2022.
Participant, Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM (TIDES), Association of American Colleges and Universities, June 10 - 14, 2019.
Reviewer, ACM Inroads, 2019.
Program committee member, SIGCSE 2018-2020, 2022.
Program committee member, Computational Thinking Development in Higher Education (CTE 2017-2019).
Technical Instructor, Black Girls CODE Bay Area Chapter Presents: A Virtual Reality Experience, Mills College, November 5, 2016.
Advisory board member, Ada Initiative, July 2014 - December 2015.
Advisor, Solving the Equation: The Variables for Women's Success in Engineering and Computing, American Association of University Women, 2014-2015.
Technical volunteer, Black Girls Code Hackathon, Oakland, California, June 7, 2014.
Mentor, MIT Center for Mobile Learning, Google Summer of Code, 2012.
Member, Organizing Committee, Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, San Francisco, CA, 2011. Scholarship committee member, 2021, 2024.
Director, Human Rights Defense Center, 2009-2012.
Member, GRE Computer Science Committee, ETS, 2008-2011.
Reviewer, Knight News Challenge, 2008-2009.
Mentor, City of Dreams, San Francisco, 2008-2009.
Advisory board member, HarambeeNet: The SocialNets in Education Project (NSF award CNS-0722288), 2007-2008.
Member, City College of San Francisco Computer Science Department Industry Advisory Council, 2004-2007, 2010, 2014.
Program committee member, WebKDD 2006, 2008; AAAI 2008; WWW 2009; ICWSM 2009.
Mentor, College Bound Foundation, San Francisco, 2004-2005.
NSF Program Review Panels (CCLI, ADVANCE, HCI): 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003.
Program committee member and scholarship committee member, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, 2000, 2004. Scholarship committee member 2006-2018.
Committee member, AAAI-1999 Workshop on Intelligent Information Systems, July 1999.
Committee member, Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics Workshop, Mills College, 1998-1999, 2003-2004. Led workshop "Digital Electronics", March 20, 1999; March 18, 2000 (San Jose State University); March 25, 2000; March 8, 2003; March 13, 2004; March 19, 2005; March 25, 2006; March 17, 2007; March 22, 2008; March 21, 2009.
Member, ACM Committee on Women in Computing, 1998-2004.
Chair, ACM-Mills Conference on Pioneering Women in Computing, May 2000.
College representative, MentorNet, 1998-2000.
Director-at-large, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, July 1997-June 1999.
Advisory board member, Geodesic Systems, 1996-1998.
Selection Committee, CRA Distributed Mentor Program, 1997.
Director and webmaster, Stop Prisoner Rape (since renamed Just Detention International), 1995-1997.
Chair, Workshop on the Computer Gender Gap, Center for Advanced Studies Conference (CASCON), Toronto, Ontario, 1996. Highest rated workshop at conference.
Member, EECS Committee on Women's Enrollment, MIT, Fall 1993.
Graduate Student Representative, Association for MIT Alumnae, Fall 1991 - January 1994.
Co-founder and co-president, Tech Square Big Sisters, Fall 1991 - Spring 1993.
Co-editor, Underground Guide to Course Six, Fall 1989 and Spring 1990.
"Why Girls Should Code" (keynote), Girls Who Code Summit, Amador Valley High School, February 26, 2022
"App Inventor", Stanford Pre-Collegiate Science Conference, March 15, 2014.
"Introduction to Computer Architecture", Lowell High School (host: Art Simon), San Francisco, September 26, 2012.
"Improving the World? There's an App for That." Sonoma State University (host: Prof. George Ledin), Computer Science Colloquium, March 22, 2012.
"App Inventor for Android", Lowell High School (host: Art Simon), San Francisco, November 9, 2011.
"Careers in Computer Science" (representing Google), Hispanic Youth Institute, Hispanic College Fund, Santa Clara, June 23, 2011.
"Teaching with App Inventor for Android", CS4HS @ Cal, University of California, Berkeley, June 21, 2011.
"Evaluating Similarity Measures: A Large-Scale Study in the Orkut Social Network"
Opening speaker, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #1, Google, Thursday, January 31, 2008.
"From Male-Identified Misogynist to Sexiest Geek Alive: My journey as a woman in computer science"
"Computer Science Education After the Boom" (keynote address), Computer Science & Information Technology Symposium, San Diego, California, July 8, 2006.
"Computer Science: Myths, Facts, and Fun", Computer Science Summer Enrichment Program (hosts: Prof. David Wolber, Prof. Sami Rollins), University of San Francisco, June 28, 2005; June 29, 2006; July 16, 2007; June 24, 2008.
"Feminism and the Scientific Method" (dinner speech), Society of Women Engineers Golden Gate Section (SWE-GGS) Scholarship Banquet, May 19, 2005.
"Liberal Arts Colleges", academic job seminar (host: Jeff Klingner), Stanford, November 10, 2004.
"What Faculty Members Need to Know about Gender and Computer Science Students", faculty lunch (host: Prof. Hector Garcia-Molina), Stanford, February 24, 2004.
"What We Know and Don't Know About Gender and Computers" (keynote presentation), Issues of Gender in Mathematics and Science, Bay Area Science Project and Bay Area Mathematics Project, March 22, 2003.
"Rigorous vs. Nurturing: The False Dichotomy", CS301 (Teaching Techniques) lunch series (host: Prof. Brian Barsky), UC Berkeley, March 12, 2003.
"Gender and Computer Science: Myths, Facts, and Successes" (dinner speech), Wilkes University, January 10, 2002.
"ParaSite: Mining the structural information on the World-Wide Web"
"Mining Links, or How to be a Para-Site", Knowledge Media Design Institute, University of Toronto (host: Prof. Alberto Mendelzon), November 15, 1996.
"Too Many Flames and Too Much Email", Google (host: Dr. Sharon Perl), Nov. 20, 2003.
"Smokey: Automatic Flame Recognition"
Stanford Women in Computer Science speaker series, May 22, 2002, and February 4, 2004.
"Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?"
"Evaluating the Locality Benefits of Active Messages," Center for Research on Parallel Computation, Rice University (host: Prof. Ken Kennedy), Oct. 20, 1994.
"An Evaluation of the MIT J-Machine's Mechanisms for Fine-Grained Parallelism," University of Washington (host: Prof. Susan Eggers), September 2, 1993.
Spertus, Ellen; Lawrence, Stephen R. Personalizing search queries based on user membership in social network communities. US Patent #9,971,839, May 15, 2018.
Spertus, Ellen; Lawrence, Stephen R. Personalizing search queries based on user membership in social network communities. US Patent #9,489,462, November 8, 2016.
Spertus, Ellen; Lawrence, Stephen R. Personalizing search queries based on user membership in social network communities. US Patent #8,832,132, September 9, 2014.
Nielsen, Thomas A.; Spertus, Ellen; and Drobychev, Alexandre. Methods and Systems for Controlling Access to Relationship Information in a Social Network. US Patent #8,775,326, July 8, 2014.
Nielsen, Thomas A.; Spertus, Ellen; and Drobychev, Alexandre. Methods and Systems for Controlling Access to Relationship Information in a Social Network. US Patent #8,489,516, July 16, 2013.
Nielsen, Thomas A.; Spertus, Ellen; and Drobychev, Alexandre. Methods and Systems for Controlling Access to Relationship Information in a Social Network. US Patent #8,429,090, April 23, 2013.
Nielsen, Thomas A.; Spertus, Ellen; and Drobychev, Alexandre. Controlling Access to Profile Information in a Social Network. US Patent #7,949,611, May 24, 2011.
Nielsen, Thomas A.; Spertus, Ellen; and Drobychev, Alexandre. Methods and Systems for Controlling Access to Relationship Information in a Social Network. US Patent #7,716,140, May 11, 2010.
These were all Master of Arts theses in Interdisciplinary Computer Science, Mills College. I was the primary computer science advisor of starred theses and an active reader on unstarred theses.
*"A Visual Interface for World Wide Web Information Retrieval in ParaSite", Dyuti Sengupta, 2000.
*"Bridging the Gender Gap in Computer Science", Jeri Countryman, 2001.
*"A Computer Science Curriculum for Girls", Alegra Feldman, 2001.
*"Earcon Design Considerations for Home Automation Systems", Eiko DoEspirtosanto, 2001.
"A Fault-Injection Approach to Predicting Dependability in E-commerce Systems", Susan Housand, 2002.
*"Human Interactive Personal Performance Interface (HIPPI): Using Neural Networks for Gesture Recognition", Andrea Plesnarski, 2002.
*"Automating and Improving Functionality of DVDFile", Lisa Fenwick Collart, 2002.
*"A Web Based Solution for Cataloguing, Organizing and Retrieving Image Data Using Java", Chetna Gupta, 2002.
*"Geoenergy: An Online Mapping Interface to Electrical Power Plant Data", Leah Roderman, 2003.
"Sisterhood: A Technology-Enhanced Community Organizing Model", Erica Rios, 2004.
"Computational Models for Alpha Helix Bundles", Lesley Evensen, 2004.
"Statistical Mechanics Studies of Triple Helix Bundle Polymers", Arina Fedorova, 2004.
"Vec2004 ~V: A robust and efficient vector screener and quality control tool", Prem Veeramani, 2004.
"Lessons from Deploying Information Systems for Microfinance Transactions in Uganda", Tu Tran, 2004.
"Brainathlon: Enhancing Brainwave Control Through Brain-Controlled Game Play", Amy Palke, 2004.
*"Routine Information Processor: An Automated Speech Input System for Support of Footbag Freestyle Performance Evaluation", Eric Wulff, 2004.
"FriendlyRoboCopy: A GUI to RoboCopy for Computer Forensic Examiners", Claire LaVelle, 2005.
*"Applying Activity Theory in the Design of Usable Software: How Personal Beliefs Shape the Use of Tools", Barton Friedland, 2006.
*"A Model Web Interface For Youth in Tanzania", Caroline Chumo, 2006.
*"A Database to Preserve and Define Swing Dance Moves and Routines", Amy Dewey, 2007.
*"Computer Skills Are Not Enough -- Computer Science for Middle School Students", Sonya Barry, 2007.
"Redesigning a Marine Terminal Application Using Component Utility Percent Analysis", Rachel Mulcrone, 2007.
*"dbSynth: Developing a Music Application on a Video Game Platform", Evan Morris, 2008.
"Emotipix: Mobile Phones as Affective Peripheral Displays", Lisa Cowan, 2008.
*"Planchette: An iOS Oujia Board Emulator", Cory Burke, 2010.
*"RegAdmin request Web application", Helen Tompkins, 2012.
*"Adding Music to App Inventor for Android", Trevor Adams, 2012.
*"Encouraging Collaboration through App Inventor", Katherine Feeney, 2012.
*"Brioxy: The Design, Development, and Deployment of an Online Community", Renee Johnston, 2015.
*"Continuous Delivery Pipeline Unit Testing Framework for Jenkins Shared Library Functions", by Jann Ton, 2017.
*"GradeShare: A Google Sheets Add-on for Easy Grade Collaboration", Gregory Rossman, 2017.
*"Plato's Evil Closet: Using a Nonviolent Dungeon Crawler to Address White Heteropatriarchy in Video Games", Taylor Sandusky, 2018.
*"Quantifying Clouds: An Inquiry into the Materiality of Cyberspace", Hillery Shay, 2018.
*"ToxSense: Providing Perspective on Consumer Toxicity and Risk in Everyday Life", Katherine Manning, 2018.
*"Spring Rod Plus: A User Interface for a Computer Simulation of a Tensegrity Robot", Arianne Agonino Gieringer, 2019.
*"The Heart of Taiwan(ese)", Barbara Ko, 2021.
*"Lepton Backgammon: An Android Client for the First Internet
Backgammon Server", Paul Mackinney, 2021.
*"GSG: The Gene Feature Enumeration Search Generator", Katrina
Eaton, 2022.
*"Mind Your Pet", Irene Serrano, 2022.
*"C-Otter", Benjamin Hamrick, 2022.
*"Check-in Companion: A Low-Intensity Mindfulness-based and
Acceptance-based Intervention in a Non-Clinical Setting",
Kathleen Xu, 2022.
Last modified: 3/23/2024