inf0rmatics

       Anita has visited different parts of the computer science field. She first worked with data processing, moved on to operating systems, then to memory system performance analysis, and lastly to messaging systems. During her early years, and after her second year of college in the University of Washington, she moved to New York with her husband to work and help him out with graduate school fees. There, she got into data processing because a friend introduced her to it. In her first job, she was taught to do formula translation, or FORTRAN, which is the first programming language that is of a higher level. She lost this job due to sickness and went on to a small insurance company where she self-taught COBOL, a programming language designed by Grace Hopper for business data processing. After her time in this company, she went and got her Ph.D. in NYU. While in NYU, she met a professor who introduced her into the world of operating systems. She was really interested in operating systems and interested in building it that she went to work for a startup called Auragen Systems Corporation after obtaining her Ph.D. While she was working on her fault-tolerant operating system [1], she submitted a paper about this system to the Symposium on Operating System Principles (SOSP). The ideas in her paper were amazing but the paper itself needed work, so she got a second chance to rework her paper. She ended up giving a talk at this conference to very well known people in the operating system world. At that time, no one knew anything about startups, so during the fault-tolerant OS project, the company failed and a major stockholder of Auragen called Nixdorf Computer hired her to continue her work in Germany. There, she finished the fault-tolerant operating system and then moved to California. While there, she joined Digital Equipment Corporation, the same company where Grace Hopper became a lecturer after retiring from the navy (Linik, 2015). It was in DEC that she worked on memory systems performance analysis. During her time there, she founded built MECCA [2], a message-enabled communication and information system. It was used for Systers, an email network community she founded that any women in the computer science field can join and ask questions. This community helped build communication between women in the same field and connected them. It was also in this time where she co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing [3]. This conference welcomed everyone especially women in the computer science field. It was originally a get-together for the women the computer science field to share their work. Now, this conference became a celebration of women in computing and a gathering for women and companies to create a community. Not long after, she went to work for Xerox PARC and founded the Institute for Women and Technology [4]. The aim of this is to bring more women and minorities to the field of science and technology. At first, she struggled with funding, but later on, her dream came true once she moved to work for Xerox PARC (Borg, 2001).