WIRE-EUGAIN Workshop
"Workforce for the Digital Transformation -
Attracting and Retaining Female Students from Bachelor and Master to PhD"
The EUGAIN COST Action organised the WIRE-EUGAIN Workshop (a full-day workshop) on 26 October 2021, as part of the ECSS 2022. This workshop was a follow-up of the previous WIRE Workshops (2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020) and WIRE-EUGAIN Workshop (2021) and open to all ECSS 2022 participants as well as invited EUGAIN members. The workshop was chaired by Karima Boudaoud, Université Côte d’Azur, Barbora Buhnova, Masaryk University, and Letizia Jaccheri, NTNU.
The workshop focused on digital transformation and informatics from a gender point of view. With digital transformation, it will be crucial to increase the number of women in informatics and even attract and encourage women from other disciplines to informatics.
After focussing last year on how to attract and retain female students from School to University, this year the workshop, looked at how to encourage female students from Bachelor and Master programmes to pursue a PhD. Therefore, the main goals of the workshop this year were to:
- Understand the impact of digital transformation on gender in informatics;
- Highlight the activities and outcomes of EUGAIN’s working groups;
- Give the words to young researchers, particularly PhD students, to understand what has attracted them in informatics and pushed them to continue studies until Master degree and then start a PhD;
- Present some outputs from the 1st EUGAIN Training School;
- Invite the European Champions in gender equality in informatics to share their best strategies and experiences to attract and retain female girls and women in academia;
- See from a perspective of science how to progress in more scientific approach when dealing with gender balance in informatics
- Involve in the debate all the other actors concerned: policy makers, industry, academia, organisations and associations dealing with gender balance.
Workshop Highlights
This year's workshop attracted around 80 participants and 20 speakers around the world, with the theme “Workforce for the Digital Transformation - Attracting and Retaining Female Students from Bachelor and Master to PhD” consisting of six sessions.
In the first session, chaired by Özge Misirli (Eskisehir Osmangazi University, TR), the current achievements and plans of the individual Working Groups of the EUGAIN COST Action CA19122 on “European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics” were presented and discussed. [Slides] As part of this session, a group of young researchers introduced their proposal for one of the deliverables of the Action. Karolina Bolesta (Warsaw School of Economics, PL), Serena Versino (Università di Pisa, IT), Irene Zanardi (Università della Svizzera italiana, CH), and Young Researcher and Innovator Coordinator Anna Szlavi (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO) have designed a video featuring short interviews to promote IT, as well as EUGAIN, to young people in Generation Z.
The workshop continued with the second session “European Champions in Gender Equality in Informatics”, chaired by Simona Motogna (Babeş-Bolyai University, RO), where we could learn from the best practices towards gender balance in informatics departments across Europe, with presentations by Daniela Nicklas (University of Bamberg, DE) [Slides], Svetlana Hensman (TU Dublin, IE) [Slides], Laura Kovács and Gerti Kappel (TU Wien, AT) [Slides], and Anne Siegel and Nicolas Markey (IRISA, FR) [Slides].
In the third session, we enjoyed a nice networking activity under the coordination by Maria Roussou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GR) and Barbora Buhnova (Masaryk University, CZ). Then, we continued in the fourth session a panel discussion with the speakers from the second session, with numerous insightful points guiding the audience towards improving gender balance in informatics institutions.
In the fifth session, we heard inspirational stories of path towards PhD from EUGAIN young researchers and investigators, Karolina Bolesta (Warsaw School of Economics, PL) [Slides], Serena Versino (Università di Pisa, IT) [Slides], Sonay Caner-Yildirim (Erzincan Binali Yildirm University, TR) [Slides], Irene Zanardi (Università della Svizzera italiana, CH) [Slides], and Sunny Miranda (University of Coimbra, PT) [Slides].
The workshop concluded with the sixth session, where Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic (Chalmers University of Technology, SE) presented her inspirational journey to the current research topics in the intersection of technology and ethics. [Slides]
*Please note that the photos above are better viewed when applying zoom out.
Presentation slides of the workshop can be download here.
European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics (EUGAIN) - COST Action 19122
COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation.
