Associate Professor and Co-Director of Graduate Program in STS - National Capital Region Campus, Virginia Tech, USA.

Janet Abbate is Associate Professor at Virginia Tech and co-director of the Science and Technology Studies graduate program in the National Capital Region. Her research interests are focused on the history of the Internet and development of computer networks.  In 2012, she authored "Recoding Gender," published by MIT Press where she discusses how gender has shaped the culture of computing and provide lessons for today’s concerns about women’s underrepresentation in the field. 

Professor Abbate acted as Discussant in the session on how those inside and outside the formal research and innovation structures, and in particular women, can be effectively engaged and contribute successful solutions to research and innovation problems that evade traditional approaches at the Gender Summit 3 North America 2013 (GS3NA). Professor Abbate brought into this role her extensive research experience of how gender shapes the culture, discipline and professional aspects of computing, and has an important role to play in the increasingly important way in which computing enables research and innovation.