Cecilia Aragon - Episode 75
From ACM ByteCast by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
September 30, 2025 · 52 min · Episode 75
About this episode
Cecilia Aragon discusses her journey in computing, her contributions to data science, and the importance of inclusivity in the field.
In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts ACM Distinguished Member Cecilia Aragon, Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering and Director of the Human-Centered Data Science Lab at the University of Washington (UW). She is the co-inventor (with Raimund Seidel) of the treap data structure, a binary search tree in which each node has both a key and a priority. She is also known for her work in data-intensive science and visual analytics of very large data sets, for which she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2008. Prior to her appointment at UW, she was a computer scientist and data scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and NASA Ames Research Center, and before that, an airshow and test pilot, entrepreneur, and member of the United States Aerobatic Team. She is a co-founder of Latinas in Computing.Cecilia shares her journey into computing, starting as a math major at Caltech with a love of the Lisp programming language, to vital work innovating data structures, visual analytics tools for astronomy (Sunfall), and augmented reality systems for aviation. She highlights the importance of…
People in this episode
Host: Bruke Kifle
Guest: Cecilia Aragon
Topics covered
- data science
- human-centered design
- visual analytics
- broadening participation
- computing education
Keywords
- Cecilia Aragon
- data structures
- visual analytics
- human-centered design
- Latinas in Computing
- PECASE
- computing education
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: University of Washington, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center, Latinas in Computing
Books & works: Sunfall
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