Wendy Powley Wins the 2026 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award
The Computing Research Association Board of Directors has selected Wendy Powley, newly retired Associate Professor in the School of Computing at Queen’s University, as the recipient of the 2026 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award. It is one of CRA’s most prestigious honours, and it recognizes more than three decades of work expanding participation and success for women in computing research in Canada and internationally.
For our community, this one lands close to home. Much of what the award recognizes was built alongside CS-CAN | INFO-CAN, and a great many of our members have been shaped by it.
In 2010, Wendy founded the Canadian Celebration of Women in Computing (CAN-CWiC) and led its growth for more than a decade. What started as a regional event with roughly 150 participants is now Canada’s leading national gathering for women in computing, drawing more than 750 attendees a year and serving as the country’s central venue for networking, mentoring, and professional development in this space. Students who attended the earliest editions are now faculty, industry leaders, and organizers of the conference themselves.
In 2019, recognizing that the pipeline starts long before university, she established the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Awards program for Canada. It was the first international expansion of the U.S. initiative, and it now recognizes more than 100 Canadian high school students each year, connecting them to mentors, role models, and the wider computing community at precisely the age when many are deciding whether computing is for them.
Through her leadership with CS-CAN | INFO-CAN and related initiatives, Wendy has also helped shape the national conversation on broadening participation, and built partnerships that sustain that work beyond any single program or institution.
“Her contributions are nothing short of extraordinary, and she is exceptionally deserving of this prestigious recognition,”
said Marc Frappier, Professor of Computer Science at Université de Sherbrooke and former President of CS-CAN | INFO-CAN.
Frappier also pointed to the unusual range of her impact. “Professor Powley has a remarkable ability to operate effectively at multiple levels simultaneously,” he said. “She excels at the granular work of individual mentorship… builds and manages complex programs… and thinks strategically about systemic change.”
That range is the point. Mentorship changes individual trajectories. Programs change cohorts. Structural work changes what the field looks like a generation from now. Wendy Powley has worked at all three levels at once, and the result has been a stronger computing research pipeline and less isolation for women in the field.
The Habermann Award honours the late A. Nico Habermann, who headed the NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate and was deeply committed to increasing the participation of people from groups marginalized in computing and technology. It recognizes individuals, organizations, or initiatives that have made significant, lasting contributions to expanding participation and supporting the success of these communities in the computing research ecosystem.
On behalf of our members, CS-CAN | INFO-CAN congratulates Wendy Powley. If you have worked with her or benefited from her leadership, we would encourage you to add your own note of thanks.
Read the CRA announcement: cra.org/crn/2026/03/wendy-powley-wins-the-2026-cra-a-nico-habermann-award
About the award: cra.org/about/awards/a-nico-habermann-award