International Women's Day 2025

To mark International Women's Day, six women from Computer Science and Informatics share their experiences and discuss their work.

The theme of International Women's Day 2025 is 'Accelerate Equality', emphasising the importance of taking decisive steps to achieve gender equality and calling for increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers and biases that women face.

In January this year, we were awarded the Silver Athena Swan award, marking our ongoing progress in making the School of Computer Science and Informatics a work environment with gender equality at its core.

In honour of the vital impact the women in our community make, we've asked six individuals from across academic and professional services to share their experiences.

Dr Kathryn Jones, Head of School

I didn’t have a computer when I was growing up, but my dad was the headteacher of a school and he would bring the computer home in the half-term breaks. I started playing games on it and this got me thinking, ‘how are these games made?’

Then, when I went to university for my computer science course, I hadn’t even sent an email and I obviously couldn’t code anything, and I didn’t have a computer of my own. But the School of Computer Science and Informatics in Cardiff was so friendly and had such a strong sense of community.

I think being alumni of the School was part of what made me want to become Head of School, and that sense of belonging and community is what I want to provide for students now.

I left academia and went to work in industry for twelve years before coming back, and I think that’s key to the sort of academic I am now.

When I came back to the University, I tried to build what I had learnt into the courses that I deliver here.

I’m in teaching and scholarship, so the emphasis of my work isn’t just on research but on how to deliver excellent quality teaching and learning.

How can I make that better through scholarship? And how can I bring my industry experience into our research and innovation?

The most important thing to me is developing and continuing that sense of community we’ve got in the school.

It’s also about delivering an excellent quality education to our students because it is a privilege to teach them.

How do we deliver that education and how do we deliver world-class quality research, but also have an impact in our local economies with things such as start-up companies and support for innovation?

Ultimately, it all comes down to community and culture - making this a place where students want to be and where people want to go to work every day.

Charlie Balcombe,  Deputy School Manager

I feel very proud to be in the role I am today, working amongst a community of very successful women.

I’ve worked in a variety of different roles at the university, across a number of different levels, but most recently have been working as the Deputy School Manager.

I remember starting at the university and loved meeting women in leadership, something which helped me envisage where I’d like to move towards in my career.

I have absolutely loved working in the School of Computer Science and Informatics. As a Professional Services colleague, I find it unbelievably inspiring to work with such bright and innovative colleagues who are driven to educate and research within the Computer Science discipline.

I’ve heard about applications being developed to help discover hearing difficulties in children, AI being used to help detect breast cancer, and understanding ethical hacking.

Working here, I can see that Computer Science bleeds into society in so many ways and will continue to do so as we move into the future.

Ramalakshmi Vaidhiyanathan, Lecturer

I joined Cardiff University in January 2024 as a Teaching and Scholarship Lecturer and took over a module from someone who had recently retired. I was very happy to get into teaching immediately and put my "little grey cells" to use. The support I had from the module leader, my line manager, and my mentor has been incredible. They helped me understand the processes and procedures of the school and trusted me to lead the module for the academic year 2024/25. I was able to make the module more industry relevant thanks to my software engineering experience.  I have always loved doing school outreach workshops and I am glad to continue that through our Technocamps program.

Assessment and feedback are one of my favourite areas in academic teaching. I did a blog post on how I use an AI chatbot to aid my students with their coursework. I also like designing authentic assessments and look forward to being part of the review and revalidation of our teaching and assessment practices.

It might sound very cliched, but everyone in the School of Computer Science and Informatics has been very welcoming and supportive.  Even though I am relatively new to the University, the trust the team has in me has enabled me to take on additional roles like Year One Applied Software Engineering tutor, and Director of Teaching Academic Support. I am grateful for their continued support and hope to do my best in my roles.

Dr Louise Knight, Director of Recruitment and Admissions

I've been at the School of Computer Science and Informatics since coming to do my BSc Computer Science. I enjoyed my degree so much I decided to stay to do a PhD, focusing on using High Performance Computing (HPC) to solve problems in medicine.

My focus in the school nowadays is on teaching and scholarship. I have worked as a Lecturer since 2018, and really enjoy teaching on our BSc Applied Software Engineering and MSc Software Engineering, including performance and scalability, in keeping with my interests in HPC, but thinking about how we can design applications to be well-performing from the outset, and how to analyse them to find performance bottlenecks.

I have worked my way up in the School Admissions team too, from Undergraduate Admissions Tutor to Deputy Director of Recruitment and Admissions, to Director of Recruitment and Admissions, a role I have held since 2022.

It feels good to be able to enthuse prospective students in this fascinating field, in events such as Open Days, to then get to teach some of them on our courses.

Dr Yulia Cherdantseva, Director of the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE)

I'm the Director of Cardiff University’s Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE) and a co-director of the Digital Transformation Innovation Institute (DTII,) as well as a co-director of the Hartree Centre Cardiff Hub.

I was awarded a PhD scholarship from the School of Computer Science and Informatics and completed my PhD study in 2014. Since then, I've worked on initiatives such as the National Software Academy, the Centres for Cyber Security Research and Education, as well as the DTII and the Hartree Cardiff Hub.  I'm an active member of the Cardiff Centre for Cyber Security Research, which is recognised by NCSC and EPSRC as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, and I'm also a member of the Executive/Editorial Board of the CyBOK project, a national project funded by the National Cyber Security Programme focused on codifying the cyber security knowledge.

In 2021, I was awarded an EPSRC grant for developing a framework for risk-informed and metrics-enriched cyber security playbooks for enhancing CNI resilience. The prototype of the tool developed in this project which supports the design of cyber security playbooks is available for public review.

I am actively interested in cyber security education and training at all levels – secondary schools, undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes, PhD research projects and Continues Professional Development courses – and I've been involved and led initiatives across all these levels. I'm passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion in cyber security and I actively support a range of Women in Cyber groups.

Amy Williams, Project Officer

I’ve been fortunate to work with colleagues who uplift and encourage one another. From my first day, both management and colleagues have provided me with opportunities for growth and development, making me to feel valued and empowered in my role.

I’m proud to contribute to a school where we provide these opportunities and have brilliant women as role models. Working in Computer Science and Informatics, I have seen some of the best minds, not just academically but on the Professional Services side too.

It’s great to see how as a school we really promote women in STEM and actively support the development of women.

Happy International Women’s Day!