Maya Hristakeva, an international student from Bulgaria studying at Simpson College, has been selected to attend the Google Workshop for Women Engineers on January 20-23 in Mountain View, Calif.

A computer science and economics major with a minor in mathematics, Hristakeva will travel to California to attend seminars and workshops, meet women engineers, explore career opportunities and get a behind-the-scenes look at the headquarters for Google, an Internet search engine. The Google Workshop for Women Engineers was established by Google to promote and identify technical research aptitude in women and promote an increase in female representation in science and engineering.

“It’s a great opportunity for her and for the school,” said Lydia Sinapova, associate professor of computer science at Simpson College and Hristakeva’s supervisor.

Hristakeva says she hopes to meet new people and learn about the latest trends in technology. She’s also looking forward to getting behind the scenes of such a large company

“Google is a new company and a big company, and I’m curious why they are so successful,” she said.

In addition to being selected for this workshop, Hristakeva serves as an undergraduate assistant in the computer science department and has also been awarded a Maytag Innovation Award for student and faculty research. The project, titled "Using Data Mining and Machine Learning Algorithms for Analysis and Prediction of College Students' Success," was approved by the Iowa College Foundation to receive the Maytag research grant.