Awards for female undergraduate engineers

Mr Conor Lenihan TD, Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation has announced the winners of the 2009 Science Foundation Ireland/Dell Young Women in Engineering Scholarship Awards.

Announcing and congratulating the ten winners Minister Lenihan said “The Government is committed to economic recovery by making Ireland’s smart economy real. This is about better jobs, higher productivity and increased competiveness. The smart economy will require more engineers in all disciplines. ”

The Minister added that “These awards play an invaluable role in helping to raise the profile of engineering among women to encourage wider female participation within the profession in Ireland. Considering the impact of science and technology on society, it is essential that women contribute to, and bring the perspective of women to the design and development of future production and innovation.”

As with the 3 previous years of its operation, 10 awards in total were made with the overall value of the SFI/DELL Scholarship award per student amounting to approximately €20,000. The aim of the SFI/DELL Scholarship Awards is to encourage more female students into engineering as an undergraduate degree and future career.

The scholarship package comprises an annual award of €2,000, a Dell notebook computer, together with the assistance and support of a research active mentor throughout their undergraduate career and the opportunity to spend summer months in a research internship in university or industry.

Ms Fiona McCarthy, Director HR, Dell Global Operations said: “One of the reasons for Dell’s success as a company globally is that we have a diverse workforce to meets the needs of our extremely diverse customer base. It is incredibly important that women continue to enter disciplines like engineering, science and technology because if Ireland is truly to develop as a Smart Economy, we need the people working in it to represent different backgrounds, disciplines, ethnicities and sexes. I congratulate the graduates today who are role models for girls at school who are thinking now about what they want to study and I would strongly encourage them to consider careers in science, technology and engineering.”