Roy F Rada Endowed Scholarship
Roy Rada was born in 1951 in Vienna, Austria, to a Viennese hospital worker and an American Army Sergeant. His parents lived through the ravages of World War II and instilled in their son the belief that education is the only permanent asset.
His family moved on average every year for the next 17 years. Throughout those moves, Roy lived with his family,
attended public schools, focused on his studies, and took for granted that his classes had an equal balance of male and female students. He left home at age 18 but was disappointed upon enrolling at Yale for his B.S., Baylor College of Medicine for his M.D., and the University of Illinois for his engineering Ph.D. to find overwhelmingly male environments. He believed people benefit when they are in organizations with a balanced representation of men and women.
Roy became a professor of computer science and devoted his career to research on algorithms that learn, reason, and grow in ways that advance civilization. Roy was active in the Association for Computing Machinery, which elected him to Fellow status in 1995 and with the Health Information Management and Systems Society, which awarded him the Outstanding SIG Member in 2001. In 2003, a Stage 3 cancer diagnosis led to radiation treatment, and Roy’s health began a downward spiral from irreversible, progressive radiation disease.
Roy retired from academia in 2016 and focused on constructing algorithms to distribute his assets after his death in a way consistent with his vision. Roy’s computer programs analyzed hundreds of thousands of records from the IRS and Department of Labor. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) scored highly in that computer analysis.
As Roy reviewed the history of SWE and communicated with its members, he was impressed with their dedication and generosity. SWE values learning, scholarship, and engineering for women, and Roy shares those values. Roy felt a visceral connection to SWE’s mission and style and knew from his heart that he had to donate to SWE. Roy is grateful to SWE for this opportunity to contribute to its endowed scholarship program and help foster the next generation of women engineers.
For further information about Roy, please visit his personal website at radatrust.org.
