Grace Series Talks Continue To Empower With Final Speaker Of Spring’23 Series

The UT Dallas CS Department continued its Spring’23 Grace Series talks with Pallabi Parveen, a Principal-Big Data Software Engineer at AT&T. Pallabi earned her Ph.D. from UT Dallas while under the supervision of Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham. The Grace Series recognizes women and their accomplishments with empowering talks that aim to foster a community for female technologists as well as grow the number of women and non-binary people in technology. These talks are intended to offer fresh perspectives and different approaches for women to navigate the technology field, whether in academia or industry. Since its inception, 40 speakers have given talks.

The Grace Series at UT Dallas talks bring women’s research and career interests in computing to the forefront. They generally feature a wide range of speakers, including UT Dallas Computer Science and Software Engineering alumni, UT Dallas CS/SE professors, and other distinguished females, as well as male technologists in the field. Drs. Pushpa Kumar, Janell Straach, and Linda Morales conceived the UT Dallas Grace Series after attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (GHC) several years ago. Through the years, additional faculty members have become involved with the series, including Drs. Karen Mazidi, Bhavani Thuraisingham, Mehra N. Borazjany, Gity Karami, and Anjum Chida. The conference was fittingly named after the woman who helped pioneer computer programming, Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. Every year, GHC brings together the community of female and male technologists, highlighting the best minds in computing and spotlighting the contributions of women to computing. The UT Dallas Computer Science Grace Series lectures follow the GHC Conference format.

Dr. Parveen is a Principal-Big Data Software Engineer currently employed at AT&T, where she works with the fraud mitigation team under the Chief Data Office. Prior to joining AT&T, she gained experience as a Software Engineer and intern at various companies, including Texas Instruments, Cisco, and DELL_EMC. She is an Alumna of the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), where she completed her PhD in Computer Science in 2013.

Dr. Parveen’s Ph.D. dissertation focused on Insider thread detection using streaming data and Big-data analytics, reflecting her interests in data analysis and cybersecurity. She also earned her master’s degree from UTD and completed her bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (BUET). With her extensive experience and educational background, Dr. Parveen has made significant contributions to the field of computing, particularly in the areas of Big-data analytics and cybersecurity. As a Principal-Big Data Software Engineer at AT&T, she continues to play a vital role in developing cutting-edge solutions for fraud mitigation using Big-data analytics.

In Dr. Parveen’s talk titled “Valuable Insights,” she provided members of the audience with a look into both her personal and professional journeys within the computing field. Dr. Parveen started by sharing her motivations for pursuing a career in computing and her journey to the USA. She then discussed the challenges she faced, the perseverance she exhibited, and the strategies she used to shape her career. Subsequently, the presentation covered her research on detecting insider threats over evolving streaming data. Lastly, Dr. Parveen touched on current cutting-edge technologies such as ChatGPT. Throughout her presentation, Pallabi provided valuable insights into the experiences of a female professional in the computing industry, as well as advances in insider threat detection and emerging technologies. She advised students to keep learning after college by telling them to keep training, earn more certificates, get nanodegrees, join postgrad programs, earn cloud certifications, and learn databricks.

Since the inception of the UT Dallas Grace Series in the spring of 2015, a total of forty inspiring women and men have spoken, including:

1. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor, UT Dallas CS Professor, and Executive Director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) (click here for her story)
2. Lily Wu, UT Dallas CS Professor and Director of the Data Communication and Data Management (DCDM) Laboratory (click here for her story)
3.  I-Ling Yen, UT Dallas CS Professor (click here for her story)
4. Ranran Feng, UT Dallas CS Professor (click here for her story)
5. Sanda Harabagiu, UT Dallas CS Professor, Erik Jonsson School Research Initiation Chair, and Director of the UT Dallas Human Language Technology Research Institute (HLTRI) (click here for her story)
6. Rym Zalila-Wenkstern, UT Dallas CS Professor and Director of the Multi-Agent and Visualization Systems lab (click here for her story)
7. Inga H. Musselman, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost for The University of Texas at Dallas (click here for her story)
8. Jo Zhang of Fujitsu Laboratories of America (click here to read her story),
9. Farokh Bastani, UT Dallas CS Professor, Excellence in Education Chair, and Director of the UT Dallas site of the NSF Net-centric and Cloud Software and Systems Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (NSF NCSS I/UCRC) (click here to read his story)
10. Peggy Shadduck, Director of both the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) STEM Institute and the Dallas/North Texas STEM Degree Accelerator Program (click here to read her story)
11. Lymari Ames of Cisco Systems (click here to read her story)
12. Romelia Flores, an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor (click here to read her story)
13. Jill Blanchar, a Bank of America Information Security Executive (click here to read her story)
14. Lisa Frey, State Farm Scrum Master (click here to read her story)
15. Kimberly Snipes, USAA, VP, Chief Information Officer (click here to read her story)
16. Catherine Walsh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Loss Prevention for Johnson Controls’ Tyco Retail Solutions
17. Nimmi Kannankutty, Deputy Division Director in the Division of Graduate Education (DGE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
18. Karen Mazidi, UT Dallas CS Professor (click here to view her slides from her Grace Series Talk titled “Discovering Your Strengths”)
19. Grace Kaldawi, Senior Software Engineer for Capital One Auto Finance, Amazon Web Services Certified Solutions Architect, and UT Dallas CS Alumnus (click here to read more)
20. Sydeaka Watson, Senior Data Scientist at Korelasi Data Insights, LLC, an independent analytics consulting company (click here to read more)
21. Ewa Musial, Senior Software Engineer at Blackhawk Network (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
22. Janell Straach, Rice University CS Professor, former UT Dallas CS professor, and one of the Grace Series founders (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
23. Uni Yost, CEO/Founder of GoAskJay (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
24. Smita Bakshi, President and Co-Founder of zyBooks (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
25. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor, UT Dallas CS Professor, and Executive Director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) (click here to watch her talk)
26. Betty Stewart, Provost, Executive Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and tenured Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Texas at Dallas (click here to watch her talk)
27. Neeti Khaitan Gupta, President, and CEO of Accelerate Consulting Inc. (click here to watch her talk)
28. Juliet G. Odima, CSM, CSPO, Executive Director, STEAM Achievers Associate Vice President, and Director, School of Data Science and Analytics, Colaberry Inc. (click here to watch her talk)
29. Seda Mauer, Digital Accessibility Consultant at Seda Maurer Consulting (click here to watch her talk)
30. Shobana Radhakrishnan, Director of Engineering for Android TV at Google (click here to watch her talk)
31. Stephanie Adams, UT Dallas Erik Jonsson School Dean and Lars Magnus Ericsson Chair at The University of Texas at Dallas (click here to watch her talk)
32. Elisa Bertino, a Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science Cyber2Slab at Purdue University (click here to watch her talk)
33. Fanny Dunagan, CEO & LinkedIn Content Strategist at Pathlynks (click here to watch her talk)
34. Tamara Bassam, Program Committee member for the DFW Alliance of Technology and Women (Click here to watch her talk)
35. Daphne Yao, Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ’56 Faculty Fellow and CACI Faculty Fellow (click here to watch her talk)
36. Maral Mesmakhosroshahi, Deep Learning Researcher at Microsoft, and Founder and President of Iranian Women in Computing, a nonprofit organization supporting Iranian women in tech in the United States (click here to watch her talk)
37. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor, UT Dallas CS Professor, and Executive Director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) (Click here to watch her talk)
38. Dr. Ling Liu, Professor in the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology (click here to watch her talk)
39. Saritha Reddy, Cybersecurity Leader and Director, Product Security at Capital One (click here to view her talk)
40. Pallabi Parveen, Principal-Big Data Software Engineer at AT&T (click here to watch her talk)

ABOUT THE UT DALLAS COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 4,000 bachelors-degree students, more than 1,010 master’s students, 140 Ph.D. students,  52 tenure-track faculty members, and 42 full-time senior lecturers, as of Fall 2022. With the University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.