Forecasting the Future of Cloud Computing

In the summer of 2020, student leader Maya Chatterjee realized someone needed to fill in the gaps for students on how cloud computing empowers nearly every aspect of engineering and technology. As president of Mason’s chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), a senior information technology major, and an accelerated master’s student, Chatterjee decided to tap into her network and partner with the Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA) to create Mason’s first-ever one-day Patriot Cloud Conference.

“I was first exposed to cloud computing from the client perspective at my BAE Systems internship a few semesters back,” says Chatterjee. “And in another internship at Amazon Web Services, I got to see to how the cloud can speed up so many business processes.” Her internship experiences set her on a mission to ensure every engineering and computing student can learn cloud computing’s foundational concepts. With this idea in mind, she established the first freeto-students virtual cloud computing conference at Mason to demonstrate the cloud’s capabilities. “I contacted Kammy [Kamaljeet] Sanghera, associate professor and the interim director of IDIA, over the summer to see what she thought we could do, and she said we have to do a cloud conference,” says Chatterjee. Then they got to work. Chatterjee contacted everyone in her network and worked with her SWE board members to get the word out. “I wanted to make sure to include a variety of different backgrounds in cloud computing,” she says. “But what I loved was that most of our speakers were women.” Chatterjee first encountered SWE and the technology space in high school. Her mother, a SWE member herself and a Mason graduate of the master’s in information technology program, told her about an SWE event for high school students. “It opened my eyes, and I just stayed involved when I got to college.” Since then, she has always looked for ways to get other women into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and the Patriot Cloud Conference was a massive leap toward accomplishing her goal. “Women sometimes get typecast in the technology space. People limit us to the less technical roles or project manager positions, and that isn’t right. We can do anything we set our mind to,” she says. And the women in the Patriot Cloud Conference exemplified this sentiment. The feedback they received was remarkable, says Chatterjee. “We had around 350 participants total. Participants were all super ecstatic to find a free platform to learn about cloud computing fundamentals.”

Chatterjee graduated with her bachelor’s degree in information technology in May 2021, and she started her accelerated master’s program in applied information technology full time this fall. And while she will not be the SWE leader as a graduate student, she hopes that the Patriot Cloud Conference will continue.

“The conference was designed to be for everyone, not just women and not just people specifically interested in cloud computing,” she says, attributing the accessibility of the conference to its success. “People want to learn.”

—Ryley McGinnis

Maya Chatterjee is an accelerated applied information technology master's student. She combined her knowledge from internships and the classroom to create the first Patriot Cloud Conference at Mason. Photo by Ron Aira