On October 10, coinciding with Ada Lovelace Day, the first programmer in history, the DonaTIC Awards 2022 were presented at a ceremony held in the Sala Tallers of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC). The DonaTIC Awards 2022 recognize 11 women and 2 entities as female role models in the technological field.
The event, celebrating its 8th edition, has a dual objective:
- On the one hand, to recognize and highlight the fundamental role of women in the professional, business, and academic world of new technologies
- To offer role models to girls and adolescents who are unsure whether or not to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines (known by the acronym STEM) in the future.
The DonaTIC Awards were created with the aim of breaking the glass ceiling in the technology sector regarding the presence of women and fostering their participation and empowerment in building a digital society with equality criteria.
The Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia, new collaborating entity of the DonaTIC Awards
The main novelty of the 2022 edition has been the granting of two new special mentions in the aerospace and cybersecurity fields and an honorary award, which stems from the incorporation of a series of entities and companies linked to the ICT sector from different perspectives (business, academic, institutional…). Among them is the Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia, the public body responsible for ensuring a secure digital society for all of Catalan society and its Public Administration.
This year, the awards have incorporated a special mention in cybersecurity, which went to Jennifer González Leyva, a cyber intelligence analyst.
Selva Orejón, Dona TIC Entrepreneur Award 2022
Selva Orejón received the Dona TIC Entrepreneur Award 2022 from Neus Pociello, Executive Director of the Catalan Institute for Women, where she emphasized that in an increasingly technological world, it is very important not to forget the human side.
See all awardees here
- Entrepreneur: Mireia Cigarran Mensa. Senior Chemical Engineer and Senior Industrial Engineer. Creator of VR Pharma.
- Businesswoman: Selva Orejón Lozano. Graduate in Communication Sciences, Advertising and Public Relations, and diploma in Business Organization and Environment and Cybersecurity in Intelligence. Founder of the company on BRANDING.
- Professional: Carolina Pinart Gilberga. Engineer and Doctor in Telecommunications. Global Head of Information Technology (IT) for the Nestlé Research and Development Foundation.
- Academic/Researcher: Gemma Piella Fenoy. Engineer and Doctor in Telecommunications and full professor in the IT Department at UPF. Co-founder of the research group in computational technologies and models applied to biomedicine SIMBIOsys, and of the BCN MedTech research unit.
- Communicator: María del Mar Porras Martínez. Graduate in Psychology, 30 years ago she began her career in a multinational company in the ICT/STEAM sector. Since then, she promotes the participation of women in the sector and in higher education in ICT and STEAM, as a mentor in the UPC’s M2m program.
- DonaTIC Revelation: Anna Muñoz Farré. Graduate in Industrial Engineering with a specialization in Biomedical Engineering. Currently works as an artificial intelligence scientist at BenevolentAI.
- ICT Student (with subcategories University ICT Student and Vocational Training ICT Student):
- University ICT Student: Belén Alastruey Lasheras. Graduate in Mathematics and Master’s student in Advanced Telecommunication Technologies, specializing in Deep Learning for Multimedia Processing.
- Vocational Training ICT Student: Sahar Fátima Syed Shahzadi. Student of the Higher Level Vocational Training cycle in Multiplatform Application Development. She placed first, along with a classmate, in the Wapps competition (best student websites in Catalan), in the best mobile application category, with an app that is a catalog for searching for series, movies, books, music, and video games in Catalan.
- Referent Initiatives (with subcategories Business Referent Initiative and Entity, Training Center/Institution Referent Initiative):
- Business Referent Initiative: Oracle Iberica S.R.L, for the ‘Oracle4Teachers’ initiative, dedicated to promoting the digital competence of teachers and students with the aim of developing and implementing a series of programming and robotics activities and projects in classrooms to motivate primary and secondary school students towards STEM vocations.
- Entity, Training Center or Institution Referent Initiative: Club Mujeres Politécnicas UPC Alumni, for the ‘M2m’ initiative, focused on the work of a pair formed by a mentor (a woman with extensive professional experience in the ICT/STEAM world who shares her experience and becomes a role model and source of inspiration) and her mentee, a female undergraduate, master’s, or doctoral student or recent graduate at UPC.
Special mentions, linked to the sectoral plans of the DonaTIC Plan:
Special mention in Cybersecurity: Jennifer González Leyva. Graduate in Criminology and Master’s in Cybercrime and Social Integration; cyber intelligence analyst at Telefonica Tech.
Aerospace special mention: Gisela Detrell Domingo. Aerospace engineer specializing in space engineering and Doctor in Aeronautical Engineering.