Director, Portia Ltd, UK; founder, Gender Summit.

Portia is an organization devoted to improving gender equality in science and promoting the inclusion of the gender dimension in STEM research. She has 20 years’ experience teaching and researching in the Departments of Computing and the School of Management at Imperial College, University of London. Her original training was in Biophysics. She now applies this scientific background to guide the work of Portia. Portia was the coordinator of the EU funded genSET project, the idea of for Gender Summit emerged from the results of that project.

Portia’s strategy is to use a variety of projects and activities to: (1) create opportunities for engagement and advancement in science, across all science disciplines for women (and men); (2) promote fair and supportive research cultures that are collaborative and inclusive; (3) ensure that quality of research and innovation is not affected by gender bias; and (4) show how new ideas and markets for science knowledge can be created by using gender knowledge, and by including women as co-owners and co-solvers of the problems facing societies around the world today.