International Women’s Day 2021 #ChooseToChallenge

International Women’s Day was celebrated worldwide on 8th March 2021. The theme for this year has been #ChoosetoChallenge with a special focus on our ability to call out gender bias and inequality. To celebrate this day, the Trevithick Women in STEM group organised a lunch event to showcase the experiences of academics, professional services staff and technical staff from the School of Physics & Astronomy, School of Computer Science & Informatics and the School of Engineering. 3 panellists were invited to give short talks, followed by an Q&A and discussion based on role models in STEM.

This was one of the three female-only events scheduled in the TWiSTEM calendar, to help provide a safe space for female networking and to discuss the experiences of women who have worked in a STEM environment.

Speaker Profiles

Professor Cathy Holt

Professor Cathy Holt is a Professor of Biomechanics and Orthopaedic Engineering, in the Biomedical Engineering Research Group at the Cardiff School of Engineering. She received her honours degree in Mechanical Engineering from University College Cardiff (1988), and her PhD from Cardiff University (1993). She is Director of the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research Facility (MSKBRF), and a member of the Medical Engineering Research Group. She is Co-Principal Investigator, and directs the Biomechanics Research for the Biomechanics and Bioengineering Research Centre Versus Arthritis. She is also the Principal Investigator for the UK wide OATech+ Network Plus (EPSRC), and a founding member of the UK Imaging OA Consortium. Her achievements and commitment to orthopaedic biomechanics research were recognised by a Suffrage Science Award (2017-19) in International Women’s Day 2017.

Yvonne Taylor

Yvonne Taylor is the School Manager at the School of Computer Science & Informatics. She has been working in STEM for a year, previously having been in the Humanities and other central services.

Dr Georgina Klemencic

Dr Georgina Klemencic is a Lecturer in Astronomy Instrumentation in the School of Physics and Astronomy. Her cross-disciplinary research draws on developments in condensed matter physics at ultra-low temperatures and transfers them to applications that range from next-generation space telescopes to quantum computation. Her most recent research goes in the opposite direction – turning telescopes around and using them as powerful probes of the behaviour of novel materials at low temperatures.