Finalists for the 2016 Women in Open Source Awards, organised by Red Hat, include three women from India, who are students pursuing computer science and engineering degrees.
Now in its second year, the Women in Open Source Award was created to honour women who make important contributions to open source projects and communities or make innovative use of open source methodologies.
The award features five finalists each in two categories: The Women in Open Source Academic Award for women who are enrolled in a college or university and the Women in Open Source Community Award for women who work or volunteer on open source projects.
The three Indian women, who made it to the list of finalists, are Ankita Shukla, a student at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Roorkee pursuing a bachelor's degree in computer science; Divya Upadhyay, a student at National Institute of Technology in Patna pursuing a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering; and Preeti Murthy, a student at Carnegie Mellon University pursuing a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering.
Ankita has been an open source contributor for three years, including projects and communities like Wikimedia, WikiWomen's Collaborative, Mozilla, Google Code-in, Outreachy, Systers, and she++; Divya has been contributing to open source for nearly a year and a half with Systers, Google Code-in, Google Summer of Code, Ushahidi, Typo3 CMS, Ruby, and she++; while Preeti has been contributing to open source for more than three years, working on the Linux kernel, Mono, and Outreachy.
The award will be presented during the 12th annual Red Hat Summit, the industry's premier open source technology conference, taking place June 27-30 in San Francisco.
The winners will receive a 2,500 dollars stipend each and be interviewed by Opensource.com. They will also receive a complimentary pass to attend Red Hat Summit including flight and hotel accommodations, and a speaking opportunity at a future Red Hat Women's Leadership Community event.