Minerva Informatics Equality Award
The Minerva Informatics Equality Award recognises outstanding European initiatives and best practices that encourage and support women's careers in informatics research and education.
The Award seeks to celebrate successful initiatives that have had a measurable impact on the careers of women at all stages. Such initiatives can serve as exemplars of best practices within the community, with the potential to be widely adopted by other institutions. Until 2022, the award followed a three-year cycle, focusing each year on a different stage of the career pipeline; you can view all past submissions of the Award here. As of 2023, the Minerva Award focuses on any stage of the career pipeline of women in informatics research and education, including but not limited to:
- Encouraging female students to enroll in Computer Science/Informatics programmes and retaining them;
- Supporting the transition of PhD and postdoctoral researchers into faculty positions;
- Developing the careers of female faculty, including retention and promotion.
The Award is sponsored by Google and carries a prize of 5,000 EUR.
The submission for the award can be made by an individual or a group. To be eligible, the award candidates should be affiliated with institutions located in one of the member or candidate member countries of the Council of Europe, or Israel. Members of the Award Committee are not eligible as award recipients.
The Award Committee reviews and evaluates each proposal and reserves the right to split the prize between at most two proposals. Moreover, noteworthy submissions will be published as exemplars of best practices and might be included in future Informatics Europe publications.
Key Dates
- Submission Deadline: 15 Jun 2024
- Notification of winner(s): August 2024
- Award Ceremony: 29 October 2024
The Award will be presented during the 20th European InformatiCs LeaderS Summit (ECSS), which will be held in Malta, between October 28-30, 2024, where a representative of the winning proposal(s) will be invited to give a short talk on their achievements.
How to Submit
Your submission package should include:
- Names and addresses of the applicant or applicants;
- Indication of whether the submission is on behalf of an individual or a group;
- 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 materials);
- At least one letter of support and a maximum of two. The letters of support may come, for example, from female faculty members who have benefited from the scheme, or the Dean/Head of the organization of the applying Institution confirming impact;
- The CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 copy-right licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0), as an indication that the submission can, among others, be featured as an exemplar of best practices in the Informatics Europe webpage and possible future publications.
Submissions not conforming to the above rules and applications outside of the scope of the Award will be rejected without consideration.
Further inquires:
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Award Committee
The Award Committee comprises members from IE Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, representative(s) of previous Minerva Award recipients and members of EUGAIN – European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics, the COST Action initiated by the Women in Research and Education group of Informatics Europe in 2020, which currently has more than 150 members, with Informatics Europe as the Grant Holder Manager.
- Antinisca Di Marco, University of L'Aquila, Italy (Chair)
- Lenuta Alboaie, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania
- Sonay Caner Yildirim, Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University, Turkey
- Miguel Goulão, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal
- Gerti Kappel, TU Wien, Austria
- Kévin Perrot, LIS, Aix-Marseille University, France
- Gerit Wagner, University of Bamberg, Germany