Julia Hirschberg: Creating an Academic Culture that Cares

Julia Hirschberg is Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science and was most recently the Chair of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University from 2012-2018, serving as one of two female chairs of the department. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.  She worked at Bell Laboratories and AT&T Laboratories -- Research from 1985-2003 as a Member of Technical Staff and a Department Head, creating the Human-Computer Interface Research Department.  Professor Hirschberg has been active in working for diversity at AT&T and at Columbia. She has been active in supporting the Emerging Scholars program and other diversity initiatives at Columbia and has actively advocated for the further representation of minorities and women in the faculty and encouraged diversity in the undergraduate Computer Science community as well. We are so excited to share this episode with you about the importance of encouraging diversity in academic communities, and the value of creating deliberate programming to ensure the success of minority students in the field of Computer Science.