Computing: report leaps geographical barriers but stumbles over gender

As senior researchers in the field of computer science, we were quite interested in the report "Towards Science 2020,” published last week by the Microsoft Corporation and in the related set of features and commentaries simultaneously published in Nature. The vision of advanced computational techniques being tightly integrated with core science is an exciting and promising one, which we are glad to see being carefully explored and presented to the broader community. We were, however, disturbed that of the 41 participants and commentators brought together by Microsoft to develop this report, not one was female, with the same being true of the 9 authors of the related articles in Nature. The report notes proudly that the participants in the 2020 Science Group were geographically diverse, representing 12 nationalities, coming "from some of the world’s leading research institutions and companies [and]... elected for their expertise in a principal field." But women have earned between thirteen and eighteen percent of all Ph.D.s awarded in computer science and engineering in the U.S. over the past two decades, also work at leading research institutions, and also have expertise in the relevant fields. In most of other scientific fields represented in the report, an even higher percentage of Ph.D.s is female. That the omission of women from the 2020 Science Group was doubtless unintentional does not lessen the negative message conveyed. The future of computing will be defined by the efforts of female as well as male computer scientists, and the failure to include even a single woman in this important study group represents a significant oversight on the part of the organizers.