Alicia Nicki Washington

Alicia Nicki Washington is an American computer scientist, author, and professor at Duke University. She is the author of the book Unapologetically Dope. She was the first Black woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2005.

Early life and education Washington learned how to code from her mother, who was a programmer at IBM, while growing up in Durham, North Carolina.

Washington said that at 12, she was told by her teacher that she "gave blacks a bad rep." She has also highlighted racist student reviews of her collegiate teaching referring to her as "rude" or "disrespectful".

Washington attended undergraduate school at Johnson C. Smith University, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in mathematics in 2000. She earned her Master of Science in 2002 and her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 2005 in Computer Science (CS) from North Carolina State University (NC State). Of the students who have graduated from this university, Washington was also the first Black woman to receive a computer science Ph.D.

Career

2006-2020 In 2006, Washington became an assistant professor of CS at Howard University, where she was the first Black woman CS faculty. At Howard, Washington helped develop Google's "Google In Residence" program. Washington joined Winthrop University in 2015 as an associate professor of CS.

Washington founded the course "Race, Gender, Class, and Computing" during her first year of being a professor at Duke University in 2020.

Also in 2020, Washington was included in an article, Minding the Gaps, by Communications of the ACM, a well-known computer science organization. In this, she was quoted about her experiences joining the field of computer science, demonstrating her media presence.

Washington, along with Dr. Shaundra Daily and PhD candidate Cecilé Sadler, created the Cultural Competence in Computing (3C) Fellows Program.

In 2025, Washington was elected an ACM Distinguished Member.

As of 2026, Washington is a professor of the Practice of African & African American Studies at the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Department.

Washington has also contributed to efforts to increase diversity in technology fields, particularly through cybersecurity education and outreach programs.

Selected publications

Washington, Alicia Nicki, Cecilé Sadler, and Shaundra Daily. “Identity-Inclusive Computing: Paving the Path Forward.” In Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2, 1730–1730. ACM, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641555.3705086.