Informatics' Equality and Diversity Blog

June 22, 2017

On film for International Women in Engineering Day

Informatics women in academia - the opening imageThe School is marking International Women in Engineering Day, Friday 23 June, by launching a series of short films and written case studies, featuring some of our staff and postgraduate students.

This follows our Girls in Tech series featuring students, published in March as part of our work to support women in Informatics, under the banner of our Athena SWAN Silver Award activities.

Individual films (around 2 minutes long) will be published on Facebook and Twitter. Links to the films and written case studies can also be found on our website at:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/about/work-with-us/equality-diversity/women-in-computing

June 6, 2017

CAHSS appoints new Chair of Digital Cultural Heritage

Filed under: General,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 9:22 am
Melissa Terras

Melissa Terras

Professor Melissa Terras will take up Edinburgh’s new Chair of Digital Cultural Heritage in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS) in October. She has been Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities since 2011, is Professor of Digital Humanities in UCL’s Department of Information Studies and Vice Dean of Research in UCL’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

Read more: http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2017/expert-appointed-for-digital-scholarship

June 5, 2017

What are you doing for International Women in Engineering Day, 23 June?

Filed under: Events,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 2:25 pm

23 June is International Women in Engineering Day. We know of two events which are happening which involve Informatics staff: please contact us if you know of any more.

  • Informatics will launch its Informatics Women in Academia films on the School website, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Check online throughout the day on 23 June. A new short film will be published every hour.
  • Sharon Goldwater (pictured below) will join other inspiring women in computer science at a panel event at Imperial College, London, 6-8.30pm. The panel will discuss the role of computing in the future, how studying computing may empower young people and tackling the gender gap in computing. Sharon was awarded the BCS Roger Needham Award 2016.

Sharon Goldwater

June 1, 2017

Women in Red Wikipedia project

Filed under: Athena SWAN,Encouraging STEM subjects,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 3:17 pm

As part of the university’s commitment to Athena SWAN, the University’s Information Services team is running an informal, monthly Wikipedia drop-in / edit-a-thon to address the systemic bias on Wikipedia, where only 16.97% of biographies are about notable women.

The Wikipedia editing will focus on creating and improving the quality of articles about notable women on Wikipedia using source texts such as (but not limited to) The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (working through surnames A-Z over the course of the next few months ahead) to turn red-linked articles that don’t yet exist into blue clickable ones that do.

So this is a chance to create or improve Wikipedia pages about prominent women in computer science.

Knowledge of Wikipedia editing is beneficial but if you have not edited before you can go along at the beginning of the session for a quick crash course.

Further details can be found on the Women in Red page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Events_and_Workshops/Women_in_Red

Ewan McAndrew. Tel: 07719 330076, Email: ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk

May 29, 2017

Webinar: Progressing female talent in academic institutions

Filed under: Events,Training,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 1:49 pm

What is holding women back in academic institutions? The WISE campaign will explore the issues in a free webinar, ‘Progressing female talent in academic institutions,’ 2.30-4pm Wednesday 14 June 2017.

Speakers

  • Hilary Lapin-Scott, Vice Chancellor of Swansea University and winner of the WISE Hero Award 2016, will talk about ‘Changing the culture to support women to achieve’
  • Professor Susan Wray from University of Liverpool will discuss induction ‘from Cradle to Chair’ and female specific programmes.

For further information and to register, go to: https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/events/1119-webinar-progressing-female-talent-in-academic-institutions

May 10, 2017

London Hopper colloquium and spotlight competition

Filed under: Events,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 1:08 pm

The London Hopper research colloquium takes place 10am-4pm Thursday 25 May 2017 at BCS London Office.

London Hopper is an annual 1-day event for researchers across the UK who are building a career in computing. Women speakers will talk about their research in cyber security, building rehabilitation technologies, simulations of the human heart, and devices for the hearing impaired.

The event will also feature  a spotlight competition with cash prizes open to research Masters and PhD students, and lots of opportunities to meet and network with other early career researchers in computing.

Entries for the Spotlight competition for  students close 15 May.

Register at: http://academy.bcs.org/content/london-hopper-colloquium-2017

The full programme can be found on the UCL web site: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/events_pages/london_hopper_2017/

May 9, 2017

Minerva Informatics Equality Award

Informatics Europe is still accepting nominations for the second Minerva Informatics Equality Award devoted to initiatives which seek to encourage and support the careers of women in Informatics research and education. The second of this annual award will be presented in October 2017 and is sponsored by Google. The Award carries a prize of EUR 5,000.

Deadlines

Full nominations: 1 June 2017
Notification of winner(s): 1 August 2017

About

The Informatics Europe Minerva Informatics Equality Award recognizes best practices in Departments or Faculties of European universities or research labs that have been demonstrated to have a positive impact for women. On a three-year cycle the award will focus each year on a different stage of the career pipeline:

  • Developing the careers of female faculty, including retention and promotion
  • Supporting the transition of female PhD and postdoctoral researchers into faculty positions
  • Encouraging female students to enroll in Computer Science/Informatics programmes and retaining them.

The 2017 Award is devoted to initiatives supporting the transition of female PhD and postdoctoral researchers into faculty positions.

The Award seeks to celebrate successful initiatives that have had a measurable impact on the careers of women within the institution. Such initiatives can serve as exemplars of best practices within the community, with the potential to be widely adopted by other institutions. Nominations will need to demonstrate the impact that has been achieved.

For 2017 examples of impact could include an improved career development and better agreements on career planning for female PhD students and postdocs as recorded in objective surveys of staff experience, and increasing numbers of female faculty.

The Award will be given to a Department or Faculty to be used for further work on supporting the transition of female PhD or post-docs to faculty positions. To be eligible, nominated institutions must be located in one of the member or candidate member countries of the Council of Europe, or Israel. Institutions associated with members of the Informatics Europe Board and of the Award panel are not eligible.

The Award panel will review and evaluate each proposal. It reserves the right to split the prize between at most two different proposals.
Moreover, noteworthy runners up may also be included as exemplars of best practice in future Informatics Europe publications.

 

Proposals

Proposals should be submitted only at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=miea2017

The proposal should include:

  • Contact information for the Head of the nominated Department or Faculty and the nominator (who can be the same)
  • A brief summary or abstract (100 words or less) which can be made public.
  • Description of the initiative (max 2 pages)
  • Evidence of its impact (max 2 pages);
  • An optional reference list (which may include URLs of supporting material);
  • Optionally, one or two letters of support. The letters of support may come, for example, from female staff members who have benefited from the scheme.

The Award will be presented at the 13th European Computer Science Summit, in Lisbon, 23-25 October 2017, where a representative of the winning institution(s) will be invited to give a talk on their achievements.

Award Panel

Christine Choppy, Professor of Informatics, University Paris 13(SPC), France (Chair); Serge Abiteboul, Senior Researcher, Inria, France (co-chair Comité Parité-Égalité); Tibor Bosse, Associate Professor of Informatics, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands (Gender Equality Officer); Gyöngyi Bujdosó, Professor of Informatics, University Debrecen, Hungary; Monica Divitini, Professor in Cooperation Technologies, IDI-NTNU, Norway; Anna Ingólfsdóttir, Professor of Informatics, University Reykjavik,Iceland; Mema Roussopoulos, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Athens, Greece; Letizia Tanca, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Further inquiries: minerva-award@informatics-europe.org

May 1, 2017

Amazon Women in Innovation student bursary video

Filed under: Awards,Encouraging STEM subjects,Girls in STEM,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 10:13 am
Claire Doherty

Claire Doherty

Our Amazon Women in Innovation Bursary student, Claire Doherty, has been featured in a video on Amazon’s website. Claire is one of three women in the UK to be selected for the bursary, which provides funding for up to four years of university as well as access to an Amazon mentor.

The Amazon bursary aims to encourage UK women to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).

One undergraduate bursary is available to a UK female student commencing an undergraduate degree in Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in the 2017-2018 academic session.

Read the article: https://www.amazon.co.uk/p/feature/3cn43h67jzc6568

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/k4HkqU3Fye0

Find out how potential students can apply: http://www.ed.ac.uk/student-funding/undergraduate/uk-eu/bursaries/amazon

April 24, 2017

Karen Spärck Jones lecture, 25 May

Filed under: Events,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 2:45 pm

We are delighted to invite you to our livecast of this year’s Karen Spärck Jones lecture, 5.30 for 5.50pm Thursday 25 May 2017, Room G.07, Informatics Forum.

The lecture, Creating Robots that Care, will be delivered by Dr Maja Matarić, Professor and Chan Soon-Shiong Chair of Computer Science, Neuroscience & Pediatrics, University of Southern California; Founding Director at the USC’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center and Director of the USC’s Robotics Research Lab.

5.30pm – Networking drinks
5.50pm – Welcome
6.00pm – Creating Robots that Care Lecture by livecast link from London
7.30pm – Networking drinks
8.00pm – Close

The livecast is organised by Informatics Equality & Diversity Committee in association of BCSWomen.

All welcome. Book your place: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/karen-sparck-jones-lecture-2017-creating-robots-that-care-edinburgh-screening-tickets-33956945137

 

To find out more about what BCSWomen is doing in Scotland please join the LinkedIn group, https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4528725, or follow them on Twitter @bcswomen.

April 20, 2017

EU survey on Women in Digital Age

Filed under: Encouraging STEM subjects,Women in STEM — hwalker2 @ 10:35 am

The European Commission has launched a survey to obtain information on the current situation of women in a digital sphere. The results from this consultation will be processed anonymously.

Here’s the link: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/2b839429-386c-c66a-65c7-5c1184301a50

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