Women In Technology - Friday Links - 13/12/2024
Published on December 16, 2024
Hello everyone,
Where did 2024 go?! We’re counting down the days until we take a well-deserved holiday break. But in the meantime… keep reading for an invitation to our upcoming Christmas party, volunteer opportunities, and save the date for our first event of 2025! We also offer some news on the 25 by ’25 initiative, some holiday gift ideas, an opportunity for PhD students, and a couple of thought-provoking stories: a celebration of the programming pioneer Grace Hopper, and an interview with activists for paternity leave in the UK.
Enjoy!
Kate, for WIT SC
WIT Christmas Get-Together and ATLAS Experiment Visit
The holiday season is here, and the WIT@CERN community warmly invites you to our Xmas Get-Together on 16 December, starting at 18:00 in Restaurant 1.
Whether you’ve been part of the community for years or are new to CERN, we’d love to have you join us.
What to Expect:
🎁 Our traditional Secret Santa! If you'd like to participate, bring along a wrapped gift worth a maximum of 10 CHF.
🤝 Networking activities – the perfect opportunity to meet new faces.
🍪 Snacks and Drinks will be provided, but if you’re feeling generous, feel free to bring something to share.
⭐ Bonus: ATLAS Guided Visit (Sorry, this is now fully booked! If you cannot attend, please cancel your registration TODAY, Friday, December 13.)
Just before the party, we’re excited to invite you to a guided visit to the ATLAS experiment, which will start at 16:00.
Registrations are open here: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1485252/overview so please sign up, save the event in your calendar and share with your colleagues. Everyone is welcome!
WIT volunteers wanted!
We are looking for volunteers to help with a number of different projects / initiatives for 2025. Please have a look at the attached document to learn more about the tasks, If you are interested, or if you have an idea for a new activity that you’d like to organise, please contact [email protected]. We aim to meet with prospective volunteers early in 2025; stay tuned for more info!
Save the date! WIT Annual Review
Please save the date for our WIT Annual Review, which will take place on Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 12:00.
We plan to summarise our activities in 2024 and outline our plans for 2025. If you’d like to volunteer a bit of your time to help with one of the many WIT activities we offer, or if you have an idea for a new activity that you’d like to organise, this is the perfect opportunity for you to get involved! The location of the meeting is to be confirmed, but we anticipate having both in-person and remote options. More information will be provided in due time at: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1486154/.
News from the 25 by ’25 initiative
With 2025 only a few weeks away, our colleagues from the CERN D&I Programme have shared some good news on the 25 by ’25 initiative. At the end of 2024, women now make up 24.6% of MPEs (Staff and Fellows / Graduates), only 0.4% below the target! In STEM fields, 23.4% of new hires were women; let’s hope that we’ll soon see more of these new hires continuing on to senior roles!
For more information on 25 by ’25, as well as some information about CERN’s informal D&I networks, please see the attached slides.
Holiday gift ideas
If you’re still searching for the perfect gift for the scientists (or future scientists!) in your life, or looking for something for your own wish list...
- 20 best gift ideas for women in science. Check out this selection of practical lab gear, fun fashion, books, and games. (Personally, I’m in love with the socks!)
- Nine books to help shape your science career in 2025. Researchers seeking to banish workaholic behaviours, boost their pay, have more influence at work or quit academia will find plenty of advice in these books, all published this year.
PhD student opportunities
The Particle Physics Department at STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has several funded PhD studentships available, to be held jointly with partner universities in the UK, starting in autumn 2025. There are many interesting research projects spanning dark matter, neutrino, and LHC experiments, and detector R&D. For more information, please see https://www.ppd.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Students.aspx. Application deadline: February 2, 2025.
Happy birthday, Grace Hopper!
Grandma COBOL: How Grace Hopper made computers more human. Grace Hopper was born on December 9, 1906. "Other computing pioneers might have made our digital machines more efficient or powerful. Grace Hopper made them more like us…. If we are indeed about to enter a new world where complex software can be designed just by describing the program you want in natural language sentences, it was Grace Hopper—more than anyone—who first grasped that such a thing was even possible.”
Fatherhood, paternity leave, and vulnerability
5 Questions With George Gabriel and Alex Lloyd Hunter. Recently, a number of statues of famous public figures around central London gained a new companion — a baby doll expertly slung across their chests. This display was orchestrated by George Gabriel and Alex Lloyd Hunter, who enlisted the help of babywearing consultant Mel Pinet to tie baby slings on the statues of actor Gene Kelly, former Arsenal player Thierry Henry, civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and many others. George and Alex are co-founders of The Dad Shift, an organization of men, dads, and co-parents campaigning for improved paternity leave in the United Kingdom.
