Inspiring Women:
WES Panel discussion - Thursday 10th September

Meet five inspiring women with diverse experiences working in and with technology. Hear what inspires them, makes them laugh and spurs them on to be more creative, tackling the challenges we face in society. And afterwards, pick up some useful networking tips and then practice them in a fun filled speed networking session before relaxing with a drink and nibbles.

This event is part of the British Science Festival in Surrey from 5-10 September 2009. Details of all events are available online at www.britishsciencefestival.org.

Tickets can be booked online or by calling: 020 7019 4947

Programme
15:00 - 15:05	Welcome - Jan Peters WES President
15:05 - 15:15	Introductions and scene setting - Kate Bellingham
15:15 - 15:30	Dr Maggie Aderin - Pocock (Astrium)
15:30 - 15:45	Dr Barbara Lane (Arup)
15:45 - 16:00	Janine Freeman (ngrid)
16:00 - 16:15	Bronwen Kunhardt (Polecat)
16:15 - 16:50	Conversation with the panel
16:55	close of conversation and transition to speed networking, allowing for some audience changeover.
17:00 - 17:15	Introduction and introduction to networking: networking tips and speed networking - Jan Peters
17:15 - 17-45	Three minute time slots of managed speed networking
17:45 - 18:45	Refreshments, nibbles and networking

Target audience

• scientists, engineers, technologists - anyone working in a STEM based role
• sixth form students / teachers / career teachers
• returners and unemployed

The purpose is to allow those who have attended the panel session and others to connect and chat and find out more about their STEM career paths, work and the opportunites.

More information about the festival and to register online www.britishsciencefestival.org

Or Tickets can be booked online or by calling: 0207 019 4947

The event is sponsored by SEEDA

Panel Chair

Kate Bellingham
National STEM Ambassador

Kate Bellingham is an engineer, broadcaster and teacher. Her main focus is on STEM - sicence, technology, engineering and maths.

She is currently the National STEM Careers Coordinator, a role which includes acting as the DCSF STEM Careers Champion. Kate is also Education Ambassador for the Bloodhound Engineering Adventure - a project which aims to break the world land speed record while engaging young people in the opportunities of STEM. Kate continues to work as a presenter, and will be returning to our screens in 2010 in a documentary series for BBC2.

Kate's qualifications include a physics degree from Oxford, a Masters in Electronics from the University of Hertfordshire, and qualified teacher status in secondary maths. She is President of Young Engineers and a patron of WISE.

More details on Kate can be found on her wikipedia page.

Panellists

Janine Freeman
Head of Sustainable Gas Group, National Grid

After completing her degree in Mathematics at Oxford University, Janine began her career at Deloitte in London where she trained as a Chartered Accountant. In 2000 she joined National Grid as a finance manager and has held a broad range of roles since then across finance, strategy, metering, operations, commercial and regulation. Janine is currently leading National Grid's work on Sustainable Gas which is looking at how gas can continue to be a sustainable source of fuel in a low carbon future. The main focus of the role is to stimulate and facilitate the market for renewable gas in the UK and this US. This has involved lobbying policy makers to introduce appropriate commercial incentives as well as raising general awareness of renewable gas within industry and government. Additionally, Janine is responsible for ensuring that National Grid's gas infrastructure and business is prepared for accepting renewable gas so that consumers can have renewable heat delivered to their homes with minimum disruption and cost.

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Astrium

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock studied at Imperial College where she obtained her degree in Physics and her PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Since then she has spent her career to date making novel, bespoke instrumentation in both the industrial and academic environments. Managing multidisciplinary teams, these instruments have ranged from hand held land mine detectors to a optical subsystems for the James Webb Space Telescope, (The JWST is a joint ESA/NASA venture due to replace the Hubble Space Telescope in 2013).

Maggie works at Astrium Ltd in Portsmouth where she leads the optical instrumentation group. Here she manages a range of project making satellite sub-systems designed to monitor wind speeds and other variables in the Earths atmosphere. These system are made under the European Space Agency's (ESA) Living Planet programme and is designed to improve our current knowledge of climate change.

Maggie recently received a fellowship from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) enabling her do more of the public engagement with science work that she loves through University College London (UCL).

To further share her love of science Maggie has also set up her own company Science Innovation Ltd, in Guildford, which she runs in her spare time. Through this Maggie conducts “Tours of the Universe”, a scheme she set up to engage school children and adults around the world in the wonders of space, as well as other public engagement activities. To date she has seen 10,000 people and has just produce a film “Space in the UK”, showing a big Brother Space ship on a journey to Mars. This is being distributed for free through newspapers and science festivals across the country.

Dr Barbara Lane
Director, Arup

Professor Barbara Lane is a Director of Arup, based in London since 1997 with a 2 year period working in New York. Barbara has had the pleasure of participating on major projects in the UK, Europe, USA, Middle East and South East Asia. She has enjoyed many overseas trips, despite being terrified of flying, and meeting people from all around the world, as a result of her work. She enjoys the challenge of engineering and loves the creativity, teamwork and dedication it requires to make a project concept become reality. She is also aware of how important communication skills are too when dealing with the many people and issues on projects. Though being born without any natural tendency towards being subtle has meant improving this skill is now a life long work for her.

Barbara created a Structural Fire advanced analysis group in Arup in 1997, and has led this team to enable the research, development, and implementation of complex structural fire analysis on buildings around the world. Her team of specialist structural fire engineers originate from fire groups at the universities of edinburgh, sheffield, berkeley california and canterbury in new zealand and the team are dedicated to discovering new phenomena in buildings and communicating these to the wider profession.

Barbara is currently the Leader of the Fire business in the UK and Middle East, as well as the Global Fire Technical Leader. Her current projects include an investigation into the collapse of WTC7 and the Transforming Tate Modern project as well as steering the fire business through these somewhat tricky times.

Barbara is on maternity leave for 6 months, after the birth of her second daughter in June and will return to Arup in January 2010.

Bronwyn Kunhardt
Co-founder of Polecat

Bronwyn is co-founder of Polecat, a market intelligence company. Bronwyn was Director of Citizenship and Diversity at Microsoft UK where she focused on technical, policy and communications strategies to improve the societal impact of Microsoft in the UK. Prior to that Bronwyn was Head of Reputation at MSN UK where the focus was on Child Safety and Accessibility. She has an MA in Development and Anthropology where she researched the impact of the internet in developing countries and a BA in Theology which sparked off her interest into whether Heidegger was right and that the social character of man can be measured by his use of technology.