Gabriela Marcu

IRVINE, CA (May 22, 2007) – On the campus of the University of California of Irvine, The Association for Women in Technology held a luncheon for their 2006 scholarship winner, Gabriela Marcu.  AWT holds events each year like the annual Wine Tasting and Silent Auctions that help raise proceeds for the AWT Charitable Foundation.  This Foundation awards scholarships and gives funds to other causes that help support women and girls working or studying in the field of technology.

The UCI junior is studying Informatics, which deals with the structure, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process and communicate information.  Informatics can have varying degrees of focus such as bioinformatics or neuroinfomatics.  Marcu was awarded a $1,500 scholarship and stated, "This all means a lot to me.  You can rest assure that efforts like yours will only push me and motivate me to work harder and accomplish more for myself and my field, and to hopefully become the best role model I can for other women in technology."

At the luncheon, Marcu said she drew inspiration for her future from the women attending the lunch as they shared information about careers, families, and lives of women in IT.  Those included at the lunch were AWT’s President, Annette Smith, Lori Shapiro, Brenda Breen, Cynthia Cotteta of Verizon Wireless, Laura Peters of International Software Systems, and Kristen Heurth from UCI, as well as, Gabriella Marcu the scholarship recipient, Marcu also added that the stories and examples the AWT and other attendees gave were "valuable to me as I prepare for my transition into the ‘real world’.”

Annette Smith, AWT’s President, was pleased to award Gabriela the AWT Scholarship, said “we are honored to support Gabriela’s education in Technology and look forward to seeing her successes in the future."