News From ACM-W Europe
Ada’s Legacy Celebrated at ADA University in Azerbaijan
The first ever ACM-W Celebration of Women in Computing in Azerbaijan was held at ADA University on 30 April. Just two days before the university was hosting the UN-sponsored International Girls in ICT Day at which visitors were puzzled by the life-size figure of a Victorian age lady. There was a question hanging on the figure saying “Do you know who she is? You may take her photo and image-search in Google or you may come here on Saturday, 30 April at 14:00”. Taking selfies and posing with her, not many recognized Ada Lovelace – the first programmer in the human history. Read more here .
ACM-W Europe Celebration of Women in Computing: womENcourage 2016 – Opening Keynote Announced
The program committee of ACM-W Europe womENcourage 2016 announces that Lynda Hardman, a member of the management team at CWI (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica) and Professor of Multimedia Discourse Interaction at Utrecht University will present the opening keynote address. I was lucky enough to speak to Lynda about her planned presentation and her motivation for speaking.
What do you encourage students to attend womENcourage 2016?
While networking early in one’s career can feel like a waste of time, people you meet now can be very valuable in the future. The same goes for the people that you meet – they have you as a network contact for later. Also, everyone you meet at womENcourage is really interesting to talk to, whether about their research, their experiences as women in computing or great chocolate cake!
What do you hope the attendees will take away from your talk?
That my research topic is fascinating and challenging, and that no career path is set in stone from the outset. I hope that this will motivate a new generation of researchers and provide inspiration for those who (will) work in industry?
Why is womENcourage important to you?
I find any gathering of technical or scientific women who study or work in male-dominated environments inspiring. The women are highly motivated and very good at what they do, otherwise they would not have come so far. Often, however, younger women are not conscious of the invisible barriers they may face later in their career. (This was also true for me when I was 25.) The event is an excellent area to explain why these barriers exist and how women can deal with them.
In addition, we are lucky to have another wonderful article where Lynda was recently interviewed about promoting women in science here. In addition to her work at CWI and Utrecht, Lynda was named a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery and she is president of Informatics Europe, whose mission is to foster the development of quality research and teaching in informatics.