The Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) recently presented its 2009 Borg Early Career Award to Kim Hazelwood, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. The award was presented by Kathryn McKinley, University of Texas at Austin, at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (http://isca09.cs.columbia.edu/).

The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and an inspiration for her commitment in increasing the participation of women in computing research. This award is given annually by CRA-W to a woman in computer science and/or engineering who has made significant research contributions and who has contributed to her profession, especially in the outreach to women. This award recognizes work in areas of academia and industrial/government research labs that has had a positive and significant impact on advancing women in the computing research community, and is targeted at women who are relatively early in their careers (for example, for the 2009 award, the nominee should have received her PhD no earlier than September 2000). Questions about eligibility should be directed to craw_awards[at]cra.org. The deadline for 2010 nominations is February 15, 2010.

Kim Hazelwood is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. She works at the boundary between hardware and software, with research efforts focusing on computer architecture, run-time optimizations, and the implementation and applications of virtual execution environments. She received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from Harvard University in 2004 after spending four summers and one post-doc in industry working for Hewlett-Packard, IBM Research, and Intel on well-known projects related to dynamic optimization, including Dynamo, DELI, Jikes RVM, and Pin.

Since 2004, she has become widely known for her active contributions to the Pin dynamic instrumentation system, which allows users to easily inject arbitrary C++ code into existing program binaries at run time (www.pintool.org). Pin is widely used throughout industry and academia to investigate new approaches to program introspection, optimization, security, and architectural design. It has been downloaded over 30,000 times and cited in over 350 publications since it was released in July 2004.

Kim has published more than 25 peer-reviewed articles relating to the interface between hardware and software. Since joining the University of Virginia in 2005, she has also taught six courses related to compilers, virtual machines, and computer architecture, while advising six Ph.D. students. She has organized and presented nearly a dozen tutorials on binary instrumentation at conferences, universities, and companies. She has served on over a dozen program committees, including PLDI, ISCA, MICRO, and PACT, and is the program chair of CGO 2010.

Kim is also dedicated to supporting and advancing women and minorities in computing, having served as a regular speaker and organizer at conferences and workshops sponsored by CRA-W and the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC), and as one of the founding members of UVA's Computer Science Diversity Committee. Kim is the recipient of numerous awards, including the FEST Distinguished Young Investigator Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, an NSF CAREER Award, a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, and research awards from Microsoft, Google, NSF, and the SRC. Her research has been featured in Computer World, ZDNet, EE Times, and Slashdot.