Lauren Cairco Stands Out Among Computer Scientists

Lauren Cairco of Fort Mill, S.C., wants to see more women and diversity in the computer science field to provide varying viewpoints and to dispel stereotypes.

The senior computer science major stands out as a student leader eager to make a difference in the field. Last spring, she applied and was accepted for a Workshop for Women Engineers held at Google’s office in San Jose, Calif. The company brought in 180 women to tour the office, meet employees, participate in technology workshops and listen to talks from outstanding women in Google. “It was a great opportunity for networking and for learning about Google’s vision and things they do in their workplace,” Cairco said.

Cairco doesn’t have to look any further than her own family for positive role models. Her mother earned a computer science degree from Winthrop in the 1980s as a non-traditional student.

Last weekend, Cairco participated with five other Winthrop computer science majors in a regional competition in Savannah, Ga., sponsored by IBM. This is her third year in the competition.

“I enjoy the challenge because preparation for the competition gives me the opportunity to learn problem-solving skills that I wouldn’t learn otherwise in my classes. It’s a team challenge, so I learn a lot from my teammates and their ways of thinking,” she said.

Lauren at a Glance

• Concentration: Computer science

• High School: Fort Mill High School

• Additional Campus or Community Activities: Association for Computing Machinery president for two years, ACM programming competition team member for three years, team leader and mentor for a computing outreach group through UNC Charlotte.

• Research: Has participated in undergraduate research at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and Virginia Tech where she helped create a lifelike virtual human to act in a Shakespeare play, helped make a virtual human that answered questions about UNC Charlotte professors, and worked on a digital storyboarding application for a human-computer interaction product design.

• Future plans: Graduate school for Ph.D. in computer science to teach on the university level. She wants to concentrate on human-centered computing to study how computers and people relate which draws knowledge from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and cognitive science.