Ada Lovelace Day Panel Announced: Join us in London for Practical Discussions Around Supporting Women in STEM #WiSTEMspotlight

Join us on the 6th October from 6.30pm at our London HQ for our third Spotlight event, a free evening of talks discussing issues around women in STEM and what we can actively do to make a difference.

This event is part of a series hosted by Digital Science to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day and will look at: Championing Success and Avoiding the Echo Chamber.

Our event on 6th October will provide an opportunity to learn from an inspirational panel with a focus on how we can champion success and avoid that echo chamber. Each member of the panel will give a lightning talk and then we will open up to a lively Q&A session to round off the discussions.

We are using the social hashtag #WiSTEMspotlight.

The esteemed panel 

Suw Charman-Anderson (Opening talk) 

Suw Charman-Anderson is the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. Each year, ALD hosts flagship science cabaret event in London, whilst around the world independent groups put on their own events. This year, Ada Lovelace Day Live! is hosted by The IET Women’s Network on 11 October.

Prior to working full-time on Ada Lovelace Day, Suw was a social technologist and, as one of the UK’s social media pioneers, worked with clients worldwide. A freelance journalist, she has written about social media, technology and publishing for The Guardian, CIO Magazine and Forbes. She also co-founded the Open Rights Group in 2005.

Learn more about Ada Lovelace Day at www.findingada.com at @findingada on Twitter, and find out about Suw on her blog at chocolateandvodka.com or follower her on Twitter at @Suw.

Gemma Milne (Moderator) 

Gemma is a Scottish creative science nerd obsessed with tech, design, Irn Bru and pi. She is a Tech Innovation Strategist, consulting on future technologies and speaking regularly at innovation, science and technology festivals (e.g. Cannes Lions, SXSW and WPP Stream). Gemma is also Co-Founder of Science: Disrupt – a media platform of podcasts, editorial and events focusing on showcasing the innovators, iconoclasts and entrepreneurs intent on creating change in science. She acts as an advisor to the science industry on disruptive communications and increasing openness and diversity.

Gemma tweets at @gkmilne1.

Michelle Oyen

Michelle is a Reader in Bioengineering in the Mechanics and Materials Division and the Bioengineering research group in the Cambridge University Engineering Department. She holds a B.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering and an M.S. Degree in Engineering Mechanics, both from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. degree in Biophysical Sciences and Medical Physics from the University of Minnesota. She joined Cambridge Engineering in 2006 following an appointment as Research Scientist at the University of Virginia Center for Applied Biomechanics.

Michelle tweets at @michelleoyen.

Abigail Hutty

Senior Spacecraft Structures Engineer and Lead Structures Engineer for the ExoMars Rover Project. Abbie joined Astrium at Stevenage, now Airbus Defence and Space, as a Mechanical Engineer in 2010, moving to the ExoMars rover team as a Spacecraft Structures Engineer in 2012. Now lead structures engineer for the Rover Vehicle, Abigail coordinates a team of specialists in the design of the ExoMars Rover Vehicle Structure, and is responsible for aspects including Stress Analysis, Design Office, Materials and Processes, Testing, and Design support to Manufacture.

Anne-Marie Imafidon

Head Stemette and cofounder of Stemettes – an award-winning social enterprise inspiring the next generation of females into STEm roles via a series of events and opportunities.

Anne-Marie tweets at @aimafidon.

Khalil A Cassimally

Khalil is Community Coordinator of The Conversation UK. He has worked on science blogging networks for Nature Publishing Group. He has a keen interest in science and leftist politics, and has regularly blogged for Scientific American,nature.com and others.

Khalil tweets at @notscientific.

Shelly Michelle Moram

Shelly works as a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Materials Physics at Imperial College London, where she leads a research group centred on the discovery and development of new materials, which is based on both theoretical and experimental solid state physics. She graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2006 with a PhD in Materials Physics, after which she took up Research Fellowships from the Oppenheimer Foundation and Jesus College Cambridge, before moving to Imperial in 2011. Her current research focuses on creating materials that emit ultraviolet light effectively, for applications in water treatment in developing countries.

Jen Gupta

Jen is the Outreach Officer for the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth, supported by the South East Physics Network (SEPnet) and The Ogden Trust. Her responsibilities include overseeing the day-to-day outreach for the department, developing new activities, organising public events and evaluating our outreach. Jen is also the Winchester Sci Fest Director.

Jen tweets at @jen_gupta.

Suze Kundu

Dr Suze Kundu is a nanochemist, literally and professionally. As a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Surrey, she combines her love of science and engineering with her passion for teaching. She is a cheerleader for greater diversity in science, and is also a science communicator, delivering live shows and demo lectures as a science presenter on the Discovery Channel, and as a science writer for Forbes.

She tweets about science, shoes, and Sherlock at @FunSizeSuze.

Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). For the last few years, October marks a busy month for Digital Science, littered with celebratory blog posts, online events, physical events and poetry (you can read summaries here).

As well as running this event, this year, Digital Science is proud to be sponsoring Ada Lovelace Day Live! again, this time at The IET on the 11th October. More details about that event can be found here. In the build-up to this event, we will also be featuring a collection of stories from a handful of talented men and women in STEM.