Women of Quantum 2024
In celebration of International Women’s Day, we proudly hosted the Women of Quantum 2024 webinar on behalf of the European Quantum Industry Consortium, With a global reach, this webinar brought together more than 70 attendees from Belgium, Spain, the United States, Japan, Israel, Uruguay, and many other countries. Attendees included individuals from different backgrounds, including investors, start-up founders, decision-makers, researchers, engineers, and professionals in academia, industry, and government.
The event commenced with a keynote by Elham Kashefi, Chief Scientist NQCC, Professor of Quantum Computing UoE, Directeur de Recherches CNRS & VeriQloud co-founder. Kashefi shared valuable insights into the future of Quantum computing as a service, stressing the importance of the entire ecosystem in unlocking the potential of quantum technologies. She emphasised the need for scalable and integrable solutions, highlighting the gap between technological advancements and end-user functionalities
Following the keynote, the session continued with the Inspiring all future innovators panel, featuring Axel Ferrazzini from Govstrat, Dr. Elsi-Mari Borrelli from Algorithmiq, from Dr. Mamiko Kujiraoka from Toshiba Corporation, moderated by Laure Le Bars, QuIC President. The panel addressed the challenges faced by young women in STEM fields and underscored the critical need for a more inclusive environment to encourage their participation and success. The session concluded with emphasising the critical need for fostering a more inclusive environment that encourages and supports young women to pursue and thrive in STEM disciplines.
The event continued with the Trailblazing Women Raising Quantum Investment panel, with the participation of Marta Garcia from Multiverse Computing, Flavia Tomarchio from Constructor Group and Sami Moughrabie from Atmos Ventures, moderated by Tanya Suarez Board member of QuIC & CEO of BluSpecs and IoT Tribe.
During this session, the importance of diversity was highlighted, especially with the interesting data that was shown; according to the Analysing the role of women as cheque writers and start-up founders report, currently 90% of all funding goes to all male teams and only 9% of all European assets are managed by women VCs.
After sharing this interesting data, the conversation shed light on the challenges women face due to biased attitudes in leadership roles. The panel highlighted instances of misrepresentation and stereotyping as fundamental issues. Furthermore, the conversation delved into the persistent problem of the limited visibility of successful women in the field, emphasising the importance of recognising and showcasing women’s achievements to address gender disparities in quantum investment.
Overall, the webinar centred on the experiences and insights of experts in STEM fields, and it served as a space for both, the speakers, and the audience to address the gender disparity that currently exist in STEM fields. As well as real-life solutions and roadmaps of how this issue can be solved, concluding that a change of mentality in all levels of the organisations but especially among high-level executives for real changes to be implemented.
From BluSpecs we continuing to work breaking barriers in STEM, inspiring future generations and fostering diversity not only in Quantum industry but in all the advanced technology ecosystems.
