Monday 12 January was the fourth edition of the Girl Geek Dinner at the Flexbar in Amsterdam. ~35 girl geeks and their male companions listened attently to AI Professor Frances Brazier as she shared real-life tales of her climb up the academic ladder.

Frances quoted statistics regarding women in academia (from the VHTO), and shared her battle-hardened point of view as an ‘old garde’ female academic, with “tough love” advice for the younger generation. Her unabashedly candid and direct point of view raised a bit of controversy, resulting in heated and passionate discussion. At the end of her talk, Francis also spoke about her research, explaining a bit about autonomous systems and the AgentScape platform that she has developed in conjunction with the IIDS group at the Vrije Universiteit.

Frances’ slides can be found here. Photos were taken by Philip Homburg and Guido van Nispen.

The next Girl Geek Dinner will be on Tuesday 21 April 2009 in the Flexbar. The speaker will be Hester Bijl, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Technical University of Delft. Keep an eye on our website for more information!