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Double UC Santa Cruz alumna and Baskin Engineering postdoctoral fellow Emily Lovell (B.A., Computer Science; Ph.D., Computer Science), was awarded the 2024 GitHub Empowering Educator Award for her efforts to support computer science students and foster an inclusive computing community at UCSC.
Each year, the GitHub Awards highlight remarkable contributions to the developer community, celebrating individuals, projects, and organizations whose work leads to meaningful, community-wide impacts. Among its categories, the Empowering Educator Award honors mentors who are building inclusive spaces where community members can thrive — an approach that is central to Lovell’s work.
At UCSC’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO), Lovell’s research and teaching focus on broadening student participation in computing, particularly through open source projects. She leads the Contributor Catalyst program, mentoring students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to become active open source contributors and engage with the field’s collaborative community.
This year, Lovell secured a $1 million National Science Foundation grant to expand the Contributor Catalyst program to five additional HBCUs, making open source education more accessible.
Lovell also engages with students as a member of the advisory board for CruzHacks, UCSC’s largest student-run hackathon, and works with participants in OSPO’s Google Summer of Code program.
GitHub’s recognition underscores Lovell’s dedication to creating an inclusive and supportive community within computer science.