Director, Portia Ltd, UK, Europe

Elizabeth Pollitzer PhD is founder and Director of Portia, an organization devoted to improving gender equality in STEM and advancing the understanding of the gender dimension in STEM.  She has 20 years’ experience teaching and researching in the Department of Computing at Imperial College, University of London. Her original training was in Biophysics. She now applies this scientific background to promoting effective strategies for gender equality in STEM.  She is expert adviser on gender issues to the European Commission.

Dr. Pollitzer chaired the session on Career-life balance at the Gender Summit 3 North America 2013 (GS3NA), an area she has extensive knowledge and experience of through the many different schemes that she helped design and implement, in particular to enable women trained in STEM to return to STEM after a family oriented career break.