The Minerva Informatics Equality Award (MIEA) recognises outstanding European initiatives and best practices that encourage and support women’s careers in informatics research and education. The Women in Information and Computing Sciences (WICS) network and the ICS diversity committee at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, were recognized as the runner-up for their efforts in establishing and maintaining a…

Congrats to Anja Volk, Maartje de Graaf and Tamara Mchedlidze for winning the NWO (Dutch Research Council) Diversity & Inclusion award! This award puts a spotlight on initiatives that work hard on the improvement of Diversity and Inclusion on the work floor, which they did as Information and Computing Sciences Diversity Committee and WICS Utrecht…

On June 26th, Dr. Zerrin Yumak will be part of the Women in Computer Graphics panel at the High Performance Graphics conference at TU Delft. Panelists: Zerrin Yumak, Utrecht University Noshaba Cheema, Max-Planck-Institute für Informatik Seryan Khadema, TU Delft Moderators: Esteban Clua, Universidade Federal Fluminense Esteban Clua Cristina Nader, Google Cristina Vasconcelos. Read more here.

The project European Value Maps of Tamara Mchedlidze that targets to present in accessible and engaging form large opinion spaces was featured by UU news. The project is a collaboration between Data Visualization Group (UU) and Sociology Group (Tilburg). You can read more about this project here.

During the New Year’s Reception of the Executive Board on Monday 6 January 2020, Vice President Annetje Ottow presented the second Diversity & Inclusion Award to Young Women in Geosciences (YWOG) and to WICS. Read more here.

On 12th of November, 60 female scientists from all across the Faculty of Science came together for a special High Tea. For two hours they discussed what the faculty can and should do to retain female talent in academia. Basis for the discussion were the results of a survey among the female staff of the…

Dong Nguyen, assistant professor in natural language processing and one of our women in information and computing sciences, has been honored with an Early Career Award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Congratulations! Read more here.

Last year Anja Volk received the Westerdijk Award of the Faculty of Science, in recognition of her longstanding efforts for a more diverse working environment. She chose to spend the prize money on a campaign to counteract stereotypical expectations about scientists. With some additional funds supplied by the Diversity Committee, “I am a scientist” was…

On Monday, 20 May 2019, the first joint WICS and WIT (Women in IT, the women’s chapter of student association Sticky) took place. The room was filled with about 20 female students and staff from the Department of Information and Computing Sciences, and one male Sticky representative. In randomly formed small groups we had lively…

“WICS network challenges gender stereotypes”, an article about WICS and its activities (written by Ria van Vlimmeren) has been published in the last issue of Pandora (page 19), the magazine of Utrecht University’s womens’ network.