Join us for WISDOM's London Universities Women in STEM day.
The WISDOM group at Royal Holloway, University of London aims to increase diversity in the fields of Mathematics and Information Security and to support the women already working in these fields. The group is just one of many in London working towards the same goal; this event will provide a forum for discussion between the universities in London about promoting diversity in STEM.
Speakers from a range of Universities will share what approaches and techniques they have tried, what has been successful, what hurdles they met along the way and any plans they have for the future. Speakers from industry will then talk about techniques for promoting women used by their company and other methods they met along their career path. The day will finish with a discussion panel and networking.
The conference is being held in the Hardy Room of De Morgan House, Russell Square, London. Directions to the venue can be found on their website: http://www.demorganhouse.org.uk/content/our-location. Refreshment breaks and lunch will be provided. Please let us know if you have any dietary requirements.
Professor Keith Mayes B.Sc. Ph.D. CEng FIET A.Inst.ISP, is the Director of the Information Security Group (ISG), and the Head of the School of Mathematics and Information Security at Royal Holloway University of London; which has been pioneering information/cyber security research and education since 1990. Keith joined the ISG in 2002, originally as the Founder Director of the ISG Smart Card Centre, following a career in industry working for Pye TVT, Honeywell Aerospace and Defence, Racal Research and Vodafone. Keith is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a Founder Associate Member of the Institute of Information Security Professionals, a Member of the Licensing Executives Society and an experienced company director and consultant.
Maura Paterson obtained a PhD in Mathematics from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2005. Her research focuses on applications of combinatorics in information security and related areas. She is a Reader in Mathematics in the Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics at Birkbeck, University of London.
Robb McDonald is the Head of Department of Mathematics at UCL and is chair of the department's Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team (SAT). He also chairs the UCL's Mathematical and Physical Sciences Faculty Equality & Diversity committee, and is a long-time member of UCL's 50:50 Gender Equality Committee. He was a member of UCL's SAT which prepared UCL's successful institutional Athena SWAN Silver Award in 2015.
Jess Wade is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Centre for Plastic Electronics at Imperial College London, creating circularly polarised organic light emitting diodes. Jess won the Institute of Physics (IOP) Early Career Communicator Prize (2015), "I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here!" (2015) and the IOP Jocelyn Bell Burnell Award (2016). Jess recently won the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) Robert Perrin Medal (2017) and the Imperial College Julia Higgins Prize (2017). Throughout her career in research she has been involved in projects to support gender inclusion in science. At Imperial, she established the Imperial College London Women in Physics group, and nationally sits on the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) young women's board. Amongst other projects, Jess works closely with the Institute for Research in Schools and IOP to try and support teachers and students across the country.
Lucy Ward has worked at King's College London since 2007, covering a number of different roles in the Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences from student facing, education and assessment to the coordination of the Faculty's PhD students training, development and progress monitoring. She has been the Equality and Diversity Coordinator since the Faculty's successful application for an Athena SWAN Bronze award in 2013. Lucy works closely with members of the Faculty and student societies to promote the 'Women in Science' Initiative by running events and workshops, and advising on developing policies on diversity and inclusion. Lucy is currently working with three departments (Chemistry, Mathematics and Informatics) on their Athena SWAN applications, and the Department of Physics who will be applying for Juno Champion in November 2017.
Sophia Goldberg is a final year PhD student studying Theoretical Physics at QMUL. During her PhD she developed a mathematical formalism for gravity using Einstein's General Relativity which can be applied to structure on the largest scales in the Universe. This enables cosmologists to answer the question: how does relativistic gravity, rather than Newtonian gravity, effect the evolution of the Universe? She has been a committee member for WISE@QMUL and JUNO at QMUL and undertook activities which encourage racial, gender and socio-economic diversity in STEM. She has also been involved in science communication, such as organising the first Pint of Science festival at QMUL and is currently collaborating with an artist for and will present at Soapbox Science 2017.
Sheila Cobourne (M.A.(Oxon), M.B.A., M.Sc.) read Physics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and went on to work as a systems analyst developing financial systems for various multi-national organisations. She has Masters degrees in Business Administration, Maths, and Information Security and is now a PhD student in the Smart Card Centre in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, supervised by Professor Keith Mayes. Sheila was one of the co-founders of the WISDOM group in May 2016.
Swati Singh (CISSP) is a part-time MSc student studying Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is also working full time at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Swati has had the chance to work in India, USA and UK over the last 19 years in the technology services and consultancy sector. She is actively engaged in organising and participating in events related to educational awareness and diversity via STEM, CodeFirst and Inspiring the Future.
Wendy Goucher had a first career as a management lecturer, which lasted over 20 years before she followed her interest in the human aspect of an Information Security Specialist at Goucher Consulting. She is nervously awaiting the result from her Msc (Res) submission at the University of Glasgow. The research focuses on identifying the challenge of raising awareness of invisible Information Security risks. Wendy's skill and unusual perspective on information security has enabled her to present at a number of international security conferences across the world. It has also given her the chance to become involved in a number of key projects with the BCS, ISACA and the IEEE.
Sarah Britton is an IT Practice Manager for Nationwide Building Society within their IT Design team, which is a 230-strong team of specialists in Technical Design, Analysis, Solution Engineering and Delivery. She relationship manages engagements with partner organisations both in the UK and in India.
Sarah is an Alumnus of Royal Holloway – graduating in 1998 with a BSC in Biological Sciences. After working in the City of London she took a year's contract working for an IT company in Chennai, India where her passion for IT developed. She returned to the UK as a Certified Microsoft Solution Developer and after a brief stint as a developer for a Design Company in London she joined Nationwide as a developer for their Internet Bank in 2000.