Athena SWAN Silver Award for UCL Computer Science

UCL Computer Science has been awarded an Athena SWAN Silver Award. This builds on our earlier success in obtaining a bronze award in 2012. We are one of only three Computer Science Departments in the UK to have achieved a Silver Award – none have as yet been awarded Gold.

The Silver Award recognises that we have gone beyond simply identifying problem areas in relation to gender inequality, but that we have been successful in implementing strategies that address these issues; and furthermore have been able to measure our progress towards our goals.

The Athena SWAN Charter was established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research.

In May 2015 the charter was expanded to recognise work undertaken in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL), and in professional and support roles, and for trans staff and students. The charter now recognises work undertaken to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women. More information about the charter can be found at http://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/.

John Shawe-Taylor, Head of Department, says:

"I would like to thank the whole team behind our application for the very substantial amount of work that has gone into achieving this. Particular thanks are due to Caroline Wardle and Jane Butler for their leading role in the application preparation".

Our current Athena SWAN team responsible for seeing through the implementation of our action plan and working towards an application for a Gold Award is being led by Ivana Drobnjak and Alexandra Silva. We will be making regular updates on how things are progressing: anyone interested in being more closely involved, please do not hesitate to contact one of the team.

For more information about the team see http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/wics/home/.

Thanks go to the following team members:

Earl Barr

Jane Butler

Ivana Drobnjak

JJ Giwa- Majekodunmi

Stephen Hailes

Rae Harbird

Guy Lever

Nuray Muzaffarova

Graham Roberts

John Shawe-Taylor

Dave Twisleton

Caroline Wardle

Tim Weyrich

Manisha Verma

Anna Zaremba