E-REDES Top Women Scholarship is a scholarship programme aimed at rewarding young women finalists of Masters in the areas of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with the aim of encouraging an increase in the number of women opting for the technology sector, where gender imbalances still persist.
“We are committed to promoting full participation and equal opportunities in our organization, but also to supporting and extending to other technological areas” can be read on the website of E-Redes, the main electricity distribution grid operator in mainland Portugal for high, medium and low voltage grids.
In a public ceremony on December 6th, the 15 winners of the 1st edition of the program were known at Central Tejo, in Lisbon, where the students of the Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering, Ana Inês Oliveira de Barros and Diana Cristina Amaral de Freitas are included.
Talking to Ana Inês she told us that she wasn’t expecting the news that she had won this award. “I was very happy to see my commitment and work being recognised and it is an honour to be among the best engineering students. Being one of the winners of this edition motivates me to continue to show my worth as a woman in engineering. I am also excited for the future, to get to know E-Redes better, the rest of the winners and to finally start my career as an engineer at FEUP. I am ready and motivated to develop new ideas that contribute to the engineering area and I would like to thank E-Redes and my family, friends and teachers that supported and helped me along this path”, shares the student that soon will start the final phase of the master with a dissertation in the software engineering area.
Diana Freitas, also a 2nd year M.EIC student, shares that being one of the winners of the E-Redes Top Women Scholarship is an incentive to continue to fight for her academic and professional goals. “This small achievement was the result of continuous effort and also the helpfulness of teachers to clarify questions and the spirit of peer-to-peer help. This award in particular reflects the potential of women in the technology sector, where I believe our skills, opinion and working method are still not properly valued. It also gives me the chance to take part in a mentoring programme, which can help me prepare for the next stage”, she says enthusiastically.
All the winners of this prize, which has a pecuniary value of 2 thousand euros and the opportunity to participate in mentoring and internship programmes, can be found here.