Two students of Romanian origin, awarded with Google Anita Borg Memorial Scolarship

Two students with Romanian origins, Anca Dragan and Simina Branzei, received Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship, according to a list published on Google’s blog.

Anca Dragan is a student a PhD student in Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, working with Siddhartha Srinivasa. Her research focuses on planning in high dimensional space and the idea of learning from experience in this context. She was born in Romania and graduated Jacobs University in Bremen (Germany), with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science

Simina Branzei is a PhD student at Aarhus University in Denmark, in Computer Science Department. She has a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada.

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship honors the memory of Dr. Anita Borg, who devoted her life to encouraging the presence of women in computing and founded the Institute for Women in Technology in 1997. Anita passed away in 2003, and Google created the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004 to honor her memory. Anita’s legacy lives on today through this scholarship and the organization she created, which has since been re-named the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology.

Google recognized and congratulated this year 70 Google Anita Borg Memorial scholars and the 79 Google Anita Borg Memorial finalists, all of whom attend universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East or Africa. These students will attend the annual Google Scholars Retreat this summer, where they will have the opportunity to attend tech talks on Google products, network with other scholars and participate in social activities. Students from the U.S. and Canada will attend the retreat in Mountain View, Calif., and students from Europe, the Middle East and Africa will attend the retreat in Zurich, Switzerland.