A successful first Women in Electrical Engineering due to the inspiring stories of Jorien, Melissa, Fleur, and Jelena!

Yesterday (1 June), the Women in Electrical Engineering event took place for the first time. The EE Programme Director and an EE alumna herself and now 30 years in the EE profession - introduced the speakers.

The four speakers told an inspiring story of how their passion for Electrical Engineering began, why they chose their career route, and what they are currently working on. Their research projects were all different but certainly equally interesting. You could clearly see that the research area of Electrical Engineering is very broad.

Jorien (replacement for speaker Loes Segerink) indicated that math, golden hands, scientific knowledge, abstract/systematic thinking, curiosity, persistence, and cooperation are in a backpack of a true Electrical Engineer. You could recognise these aspects in her talk about her research.

Melissa talked about her graduation project on face recognition and showed that everyone actually has a lookalike. Her research was focused on forensics and showed how much certain people look alike. Features like the shape of eyebrows and noses are important in the measurements. Congratulations go to Melissa, she will start a PhD research in Electrical Engineering after the summer holidays.

Fleur explained how her choice of Thales had come about. After several years of working for two smaller companies, she thought it was time to work for a larger company. She found this job within Thales and is working within the Radar Front End Department, where she works together in a multidisciplinary team in which each has his/her own expertise.

The lecture afternoon ended with a lecture by Jelena Popovic. Besides her passion for her work on Energy Access, she is also very committed to having more female role models in Electrical Engineering. During her lecture, she also gave 7 lessons in 'How to be a (happy) women engineer'.

After the lectures, there was still time to talk over drinks and ask the remaining questions.

We can conclude that this first Woman in EE was a success due to the stories of the inspiring speakers and the audience asking interesting questions.