ACM New York Celebration of Women in Computing
Promoting the Academic, Social, and Professional Growth of Technical Women and Their Allies in New York State
April 10-11, 2026
Albany, NY
Friday, April 10th
10:30 am-6:30 pm
East Gallery A
Registration
12:15-1:15 pm
Governor A
Lunch & welcome speech
1:20-2:20 pm
Breakout Session 1
Governor D
Talks: Natural Language Processing Applications
#1: Natural Language–Driven Multi-Robot Exploration - Saswati Bhattacharjee (University at Albany)#2: Dark Web Digger: Modular Scraping for Dark Web Intel - Samantha Stortz (Marist University)Panel: Internship Hunting Without a Referral: Strategies, Tradeoffs, and Non-Linear Paths in Early-Career Hiring
Governor E
Nisheta Gupta, Ritika Ramesh, Aswathi Thilak (Pratt Institute) , Jayapreetha Natesan (IBM)Workshop: Game Development - Introduction to Real-time Tools in the Epic Games Ecosystem
Governor B
Somi Ogunsuada (Epic Games Education)2:30-3:30 pm
Breakout Session 2
Governor B
Talks: Cybersecurity
#1: Relevancy Scoring Determined Through Automated Vulnerability Prioritization - Caitlin Bartman (Marist University)#2: Scaling Quantum Computer Algorithms for Mitigating Denial of Service Attacks - Rian Dickman (Marist University)Governor D
Talks: Machine Learning Applications
#1: SPECTRA: A Bayesian Machine Learning Framework for Modeling and Predicting Exoplanetary Atmospheric Absorption Spectra - Vasuda Trehan (University at Albany)
#2: Geometry-Preserving Supervised Biological Sequence Design - Elham Sadeghi (University at Albany)Workshop: Career Development
Governor E
More Than Just Code: How to Build a Software Engineering Career You Love - Kathleen Nordstrom, Corinne DeStefano (Broadcom)Career fair setup
East Gallery
4:00 pm
Hotel check-in
3:40-5:10 pm
East Gallery
5:20-6:20 pm
Breakout Session 3
Governor D
Talks: CS Education
#1: Security for Saints - Sanjuktha Arikatla (Siena University)
#2: Research on Experiences of Incarcerated Adult Students in CS - Ella RoundyGovernor E
Talks: Career Development
#1: From Computer Science to the Legislature: Navigating as a Woman in Computing - Khandker Sadia Rahman (Rockefeller Institute of Government)
#2: Ship It Right: Technical and Human Playbooks for Launching IBM Z Systems - Jayapreetha Natesan (IBM)Governor B
Workshop: AI-driven prototyping
How Ideas Become Interactive Systems: A Hands-On AI Prototyping Workshop - Nisheta Gupta, Ritika Ramesh, Aswathi Thilak (Pratt Institute)6:30-8:00 pm
Governor A
Dinner
7:00 - 8:00 pm
Governor A
8:10 - 10:00 pm
Governor B
Fun Night
Playtesting
Sarah Gelfand (University at Albany), Form to register your game for testingSaturday, April 11th
8:30 – 10:00 am
Governor A
Breakfast
East Gallery
Poster Setup
9:00 - 10:00 am
Governor A
10:00 – 10:20 am
Governor A
Poster Pitches
10:25 – 11:25 am
East Gallery
Poster Session
11:30am– 12:30 pm
Breakout Session 4
#1: Token Embedding Geometry for Sequence Predictive Tasks - Elham Sadeghi (University at Albany)
#2: Structure and Size of Sharac-n Quandles - Husna Manalai (Bard College)Talks: Machine learning and Mathematics
Governor D
Governor B
From Zero to Full-Stack: Build Your First Web App in 60 Minutes - Makayla Coleman, Unnati Shah (Utica University)Workshop: Web development
Workshop: Career development
Governor E
When Doing Everything Right Stops Working: Building Career Leverage Before You Have a Title - Kelly Chen (Bloomberg)12:30 - 1:30 pm
Governor A
Lunch & Award Ceremony
