Interview with Magdalini Chatzaki, FORTH-ICS

Dear Magdalini, What role do you play in your organization?
I am an Msc Computer Scientist working as a telecommunication engineer for the Department of Systems and Networks (DSN) within the Institute of Computer Science (ICS) of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH). I received my degrees from the Computer Science Department of the University of Crete in mid-1990s and have been working at FORTH-ICS for many years. At that time, female students were among a very small minority in the field of computer science in Greece. As a newcomer I was one of only nine women out of approximately 100 students admitted to the CS department that semester. Although things are much better today, there is still a gap to fill in and progress to balance is extremely slow. Despite the global shortage of computer science specialists and the availability of numerous highly paid vacancies, women and other groups remain far less represented among candidates compared to their male counterparts—an issue worthy of discussion.