And the winner of the Highly Commended WISE Leadership award goes to…Nela Brown, Chair of WISE@QMUL 2012

WISE are proud to announce the three highly commended and ten winners of the 2013 WISE Awards who received their awards from HRH The Princess Royal at the ceremony at the Science Museum on 14th November.

The QMUL team—Prof Ursula Martin, Prof Edmund Robinson, Katja Knecht (MAT/G.Hack), Ann-Louise Anderson (SEMS/WISE@QMUL) and Nela Brown (CogSci/G.Hack)—and their guests Steven Brown, Prof Caroline Wardle and Dr Rona Ramsey had a wonderful evening at the stunning venue.

Science Museum: what a great venue for the 2013 WISE Awards

Nela and Ursula (nominees for Leader Award and Lifetime Achievement Award) had the great honour of meeting all the other incredible nominees, as well as shaking hands and chatting with the amazing HRH The Princess Royal, who is a big supporter of WISE!

Nela making the HRH Princess Royal laugh during meet and greet!

We managed to bring one award ‘home’ this time (Highly Commended WISE Leader Award) and are certainly planning to be back next year and win more awards to flag the good work the female members of staff and students are doing at QMUL with the invaluable support from their departments.

A big thank you to Bertille for doing all the paperwork and putting forward the QMUL nominees and to Ursula (an amazing supporter of WISE@QMUL and G.Hack activities from the very start), who besides being nominated for the lifetime achievement award also miraculously managed to raise funds for a QMUL dedicated table! What a star!

The Highly Commended WISE Leader Award was given in the recognition of all the amazing things Nela has managed to achieve with the G.Hack, WISE@QMUL and Flossie teams in the past few years so she sends out a huge thank you to all the ladies who have worked with her on these projects and supported her over the years, and with whom she would like to share this award with!

An obligatory (unofficial) photo is below with representatives of QMUL. Click here for more official photos.

Left to right: Bertille Calinaud (QMUL Diversity Manager), Katja Knecht (MAT/G.Hack), Nela Brown, (CogSci/G.Hack), Ann-Louise Anderson (SEMS/WISE@QMUL)

Looking forward to next year!

8th-9th Nov 2013: Flossie 2013

Flossie 2013 brings together FLOSS women developers, entrepreneurs, researchers and policy-makers, digital artists and social innovators for an exciting mix of talks, spontaneous discussions and open workshops. Flossie 2013 brings the benefits of open thinking to artist and entrepreneurs and the insights of diverse innovators to FLOSS development.

This year’s theme is diversity: women, LGBTQ and men with an interest in diversifying technology are welcome to attend and the building offers wheelchair access, please note our diversity and anti-harassment policy.

Download the Programme for Flossie 2013 here.

Register for Flossie 2013 now – tickets are going fast!

Flossie 2013 builds on last year’s success with new threaded mini-events: Google and Mozilla coders will be evaluating contributions to our Open CodeSprint and we are also combining students of architecture and product design with disability communities, makers and coders to explore and prototype Smart Assistive Environments innovation for Living Aids industry partners.

Click here for more information or to take part in the CodeSprint.

Click here for more information or to take part in the Diversifying Internet of Things project.

We look forward to seeing you at Flossie 2013 (@flossienet, #flossie2013)!

WISE@QMUL will be sponsoring Flossie 2012

WISE@QMUL will be sponsoring Flossie 2012, a free two-day event for women who use or are interested in Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in Digital Arts or Open Data, Open Knowledge, Social Innovation, Research and Education.

Flossie is an independent network of women practitioners that has its roots in social change movements as well as arts, technology and academia. Whether you code, tinker or want to explore alternatives to ‘big-tech’ corporations, all women are welcome to this conference.

WISE@QMUL Chair Nela Brown is a key organiser of the event and will be speaking about WISE and G.Hack, another QMUL based group.