Member of Research Staff, Xerox PARC, Founding Director, Institute for Women and Technology

Inducted in 1998

Dr. Anita Borg passed away in 2003, the Institute for Women in Technology was renamed to "Anita Borg Institute."

Inspired by her accomplishments and achievements, many awards named in her honor are still given today to the most deserving of candidates, including the Anita Borg Social Impact Award, the Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award, and the Anita Borg Top Company for Technical Women Award. Both Google and the University of New South Wales School of Computer Science and Engineering offer scholarships in her name.

Before her death, Anita was a computer scientist in the office of the chief technologist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. She was a visionary who started the first email network for women in technology, Systers.

Anita founded the Institute for Women and Technology, an experimental research and development organization. The institute focuses on increasing the impact of women in technology and the positive impact of technology on the world’s women. At the institute, technologists, social scientists, and community members work together to create technologies based on women’s needs, situations, and geniuses.

Anita co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, a successful technical computer science conference inspired by the legacy of Navy Admiral Grace Murray Hopper. The Grace Hopper Foundation features successful women in computing.

Anita spent four years building a fault-tolerant, Unix-based operating system, a first for the Auragen Systems Corporation of New Jersey. Afterward, she built an operating system with the Nixdorf Computer in Germany.

Her experience running the ever-expanding Systers mailing list led her to work in email communication and brought her move to the Network Systems Laboratory. There, Anita developed the Message-Enabled Communication and Information System computer platform, an email and web-based system for communicating in virtual communities.

In 1986, she joined Digital Equipment Corporation’s Western Research Laboratory where she developed and patented a method for generating complete address traces for analyzing and designing high-speed memory systems.

Anita served as a member of the National Research Council’s Committee on Women in Science and Engineering and the committees on women of both Computing Research Agency and the Association for Computing Machinery. She served on the Presidential Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology.

In 1995, Anita received one of three Pioneer Awards from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing for her work on behalf of women in the computing field. She received the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy, and Employment in 2002.

Anita was listed in "Open Computing" Top 100 Women in Computing. She was also fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and a member of the board of directors of the Computing Research Association.

Anita earned her doctorate from New York University for work on operating system synchronization efficiency. She had an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University that same year.

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Anita Borg
Anita Borg Institute