10 June 2012

Shazia's success in prestigious google scholarship competition

A computing PhD student at the University of Dundee is heading to Switzerland this month with industry giants Google after success in a prestigious scholarship competition.

Shazia Akbar (21), a former pupil of the city's Morgan Academy, is a Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2012 Finalist.

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship honours the memory of Dr Anita Borg, who devoted her life to encouraging the presence of women in computing and founded the Institute for Women in Technology in 1997.

The Scholarship aims to encourage women to excel in computing and technology, and become active role models and leaders. Places on the Scholarship are awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic performance, leadership experience and demonstrated passion for computer science.

All finalists and scholars have been invited to visit the Google Engineering office in Zurich for a networking retreat. The retreat will provide an opportunity for them to get together, meet each other, network, share their experiences and create a community of leaders in the computer science field.

"I am absolutely delighted and really looking forward to visiting Zurich," said Shazia, who graduated top of her year with an Applied Computing degree from Dundee last year.

"I initially wasn't even going to apply for the scholarship but I got great encouragement from staff in the School of Computing to go for it and that has proved to be great advice!"

Shazia is now studying for her PhD with the School of Computing's Computer Vision & Image Processing group, supervised by Professor Stephen McKenna. Her research is developing computer software to analyse histopathology images of breast cancer, in collaboration with Professor Alastair Thompson and Dr Lee Jordan in the University Medical School at Ninewells Hospital.

Professor McKenna commented, "Shazia will join a select group of 87 female computer science students from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Google's Scholars' Retreat. We are delighted that Google has selected Shazia for what should be an inspiring event that should help her with her Ph.D. and on her path to becoming a leader in computing."

The aim of Shazia's research is to detect tumour regions in breast tissue automatically with minimal input from a pathologist, using machine learning techniques.

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