From Fear to Freedom: How a Tech Visionary Overcame Fear to Soar

Dr. Cecilia Aragon is a computer scientist, professor, award-winning author, and champion aerobatic pilot. The cofounder of Latinas in Computing, she is the first Latina to earn the rank of full professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington in its 100-year history. Her memoir, Flying Free: My Victory Over Fear to Become the First  Latina Pilot on the US Aerobatic Team, shares her journey of breaking past her own fears to become a competitive pilot.

Dr. Aragon will share how she broke free from expectations and rose above her own limits by combining her passion for flying with math and logic in unexpected ways. Her story will inspire you to overcome your own greatest fears and achieve the freedom you always dreamed of. You don’t have to be a math whiz or a science geek to learn from her  story. You just have to want to soar.

Dr. Aragon directs the Human-Centered Data Science Lab at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on analysis of vast data sets. Her awards for research, and a stint designing software for NASA, led President Obama to call her "one of the top scientists and engineers in the country” when she received the prestigious Presidential Early  Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. She has worked with Nobel Prize winners, taught astronauts to fly, and created musical simulations of the universe with rock stars. She is the author of Flying Free (Blackstone 2020), Human-Centered Data Science (MIT Press 2022), and Writers in the Secret Garden: Fanfiction, Youth, and New Forms of  Mentoring (MIT Press 2019). She has spoken at major corporations such as TED, Google, Nokia, Roche Laboratories, and IBM; top universities and national labs such as Stanford and MIT; and has keynoted national and international conferences.