Dr. Lily Wu Inspires Students at the Second Grace Series Lecture
On May 4th 2015, the UT Dallas Computer Science Department’s Grace Series Lectures continued with Dr. Lily Wu as the featured speaker. The objective of the Grace Series is to present a program of lectures about the role of women in today’s technology fields and provide inspiration to female graduate and undergraduate students in Computer Science and Software Engineering
Dr. Lily Wu is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Liaoning University of Engineering and Technology in China in 1989. After graduation, she worked in the field of mechanical engineering as an associate researcher and associate chief engineer at the Chinese Academy of Mine Science and Technology for four years.
In 1993, Dr. Wu moved to the United States. Her first stop was the University of Wisconsin where she earned an MS degree in Economics. She changed her academic focus for her 2nd MS degree and graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities in 1998. She completed her PhD in 2002 from the same university. Dr. Wu came to UT Dallas as an Assistant Professor the same year. She was appointed an associate professor in 2008 and Full Professor in 2013. Her research focus is on data communication and data management.
Dr. Wu’s academic career is impressive with more than 125 peer reviewed journal publications, 75 conference presentations, books, awards and honors, professional recognition and service and a dozen research grants. As proud as she is of her professional achievements, she is just as proud of her personal life and has always worked on finding a balance between the two.
“My work is very important to me and I love being a professor, doing research and advising my doctoral students. But in order to be successful at work, I also need to be happy and content in my personal life. My family is very important to me. I treasure my relationship with my parents, my husband and my children. My daughters are my best friends and we are all very close. Treating everyone with kindness and being happy and healthy are just as important as having high ambitions in one’s career, and, in fact, my focus on being kind and staying happy, I believe, has helped me in becoming a better researcher.”
Drs. Pushpa Kumar and Janell Straach gave opening remarks before turning the floor over to Dr. Wu. Both are UT Dallas Computer Science faculty members and it was they who conceived the idea of the Grace Series talks at UT Dallas after attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) Conference last year. The conference, aptly named after the woman who helped pioneer computer programming, Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, involved a series of presentations designed to bring research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. The UT Dallas Computer Science Grace Series lectures are patterned after the GHC Conference format.
