The Women of Color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Conference has been celebrating innovation in STEM for almost three decades.
The 2024 award winners will be receiving their awards this October during the WOC STEM Conference. You can register for the event by clicking here.
With just under two months until WOC29, we'll be taking a look at the achievements of past winners.
The 2019 Women of Color in STEM award winners were recognized for innovation in various new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), cloud platforms, cybersecurity, data science, drone tech, machine learning, open-source, and virtual reality (VR).
Dr. Carla Cotwright-Williams, chief of data & AI at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, received the Outstanding Technical Contribution in Government Award.
She is a senior data scientist at the Department of Defense (DoD) and is currently detailed to the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), the DoD Center of Excellence that provides expertise to help the department harness the power of AI.
Since joining the JAIC in 2019, she has been the first data scientist to work in the center and has assisted in developing data and AI standards, thereby advancing the mission and focus of the JAIC in a short time.
Before joining the DoD, Dr. Cotwright-Williams conducted academic research with NASA on random graphs and their direct relationship with a graphical model that encodes probabilistic relationships and autonomous vehicles.
Furthermore, her work with the U.S. Navy involved research in statistical measures of uncertainty to create information security and cryptologic techniques for use with data integrity problems.
Dr. Cotwright-Williams also holds the distinction of being the first African American to be awarded the American Mathematical Society (AMS) Congressional Fellowship, part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Fellowship program.
During her time on Capitol Hill, she served as a congressional staffer on the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where she reported to and advised the committee chairs on policy changes.
