Interviewing Maria Antolin Fernandez, Director of the valuation, Valorization and Training Area at the Technological Institute of Informatics (ITI)
AI-PRISM is a strong consortium of 25 entities plus an affiliate. It represents all EU smart manufacturing value chains and has the key competencies to develop the ecosystem that will make manufacturing workers’ lives easier and healthier with cobots.
Today, our special guest is Maria Antolin Fernandez, Director of the Evaluation, Valorization and Training Area at the Technological Institute of Informatics (ITI). Maria is a passionate engineer in Information and Communication Technologies applied to health and accessibility. She is part of the 41% of women working in science and engineering in the European Union based on the last Eurostat report in 2021.
Find below what she has told us about her experience and profession as a woman working in this field.
Hello Maria Antolin, I hope you are doing great. We are happy to count on you in the celebration of women in Technology and science this month.
What is your role at AI-PRISM?
Hello, thank you for having me!
I specialized in technology valorization and transferred at ITI (Instituto Tecnológico de Informática), so my role at AI-PRISM consists of contributing to the transfer of knowledge and critical results of the project to the interested groups.
In addition, I will work on developing the AI-PRISM exploitation roadmap, seeking sustainability and the transfer of the Key Exploitable Assets to real-life scenarios.
And why did you decide to study Telecommunications Engineering and become a woman in Science and Technology?
I studied Telecommunications Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, in Spain, because I was motivated and curious about Technology and research in general.
Also, because I thought that an engineer could acquire excellent knowledge, implement a wide variety of roles and tasks in many industries and sectors and, of course, find better job offers, even abroad.
What is the most common misconception about women working in your field?
Even though the situation has evolved slightly in recent years, the reality is that women are still a minority in science and technology.
This may be due to the misconception that women are less qualified for engineering and technical matters and more so for social or human tasks.
And because of the historical perception and association of engineering and science with masculine roles and the scarcity of female references.
How can we attract more women to work in science and Technology?
Scientific vocations in women are better since they are girls and adolescents, which could be encouraged if we eliminate stereotypes and make visible female references. Moreover, communication must be improved because many people, not only women, don’t know what the job of an engineer or scientist is like.
To achieve this goal, it is essential to develop educational programs that motivate adolescents to choose STEM studies, to create programs to attract women to business schools and to increase the number of female teachers in charge of providing technological training at the university, as well as women at the head of technology companies so that girls have successful female references in which to project their future.
In addition to these aspects, we must consider two other challenges that affect women worldwide: the work-life balance and the gender wage gap.
Thank you very much, Maria, for such an insightful talk!
Thank you!