Katharina Ceesay-Seitz is currently working on the verification of safety-critical electronics for radiation monitoring at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. This work was part of her Master’s thesis for her studies in Embedded Systems at the TU Wien. Before that she worked as Embedded Software Developer in Vienna (TTControl) and Barcelona (Giesecke & Devrient). During her Bachelor’s studies in Software & Information Engineering, she spent 6 months at the European Space Agency in Madrid.
Sabine Wimmer heads up the infrastructure department at Wiener Linien. She is therefore responsible for the strategic planning of construction projects, with her and her team checking the offers submitted by construction companies and also assuming responsibility for the budgets allocated to these construction projects. One of her main focuses is on digitalisation: all construction work is digitally captured so that as-completed drawings, track kilometres and similar information is all easily accessible. Sabine studied Engineering at the Vienna University of Technology. At Wiener Linien, she was formerly a sub-department head while on part-time parental leave before being promoted to the position of department head.
Sebyll Onbasi has been working for more than two years in Security Consulting. Also, she has been working as a Consultant with the Viennese Start-Up KIVU Technologies with a focus on security, forensics, and startegic network analysis. In her first job role she was a software developer and an intern at the Austrian Central Bank. Sebyll is passionate about tech for good, public safety, and security as well as she is interested in software development and applied cryptography. She is a member of the IEEE Association, Woman Techmakers, OWASP, IACR, and Erich Fromm Society. In her free time, she is reading books about cryptology, software development and psychoanalysis, as well as she is a long distance runner.
Katrin Strasser is an AI software developer with main focus on Natural Language Processing at Catalysts. This includes planning and developing software for AI projects, as well as Business Development. During her bachelor studies in Game Development & Augmented Reality and her master studies in Bioinformatics she was able to gain insights into a broad variety of IT related topics.
Jillian is a biochemist and molecular biologist by training who, after her PhD, jumped feet first into the world of Data Science in Telecommunications. Navigating interactions and experiences in a field desperate for diversity, she creatively applies her research skills on a daily basis as part of the Advanced Analytics & AI Team at A1 Austria.
Born in Korea, raised in the U.S. and in based in Austria since 2012, Kaitlyn WonJung Chang has 15 years' working experience in the intersection between tech and creativity. She has worked for 10 years at Samsung Group and led the Austrian branch office as Managing Director of Cheil Austria & Switzerland, the in-house creative agency of Samsung. She has won more than 50 international and Austrian innovation and creative awards and currently works as COO at Kobza and the Hungry Eyes - KTHE GmbH, an Austrian independent creative agency. In her "second life" she dedicates her free time to serving as Vice President for the nonprofit organization Women of Vienna, the biggest community for women* in Austria with more than 16,500 members, and mentors and advises startups in both Vienna and Seoul.
Christiana Seethaler holds a Master of Science degree in electronics and computer science from the Technical University of Graz and completed an executive MBA program with focus on project and process management. After a few years of professional experience in embedded software development she joined TTTech in 2001. There she held various positions in project and product management with a focus on safety related electronic controllers. In 2013 she took over the position as a technical head of the business unit Off-Highway at TTTech and director product development at TTControl. Her professional interests are in the areas of embedded software, functional safety and autonomous driving.
Christina is a freshwater ecologist and visual artist working at the intersection of art and science. She currently lives in Vienna but travels most of the time along rivers, investigating the relationship between rivers and people. In her work as researcher and lecturer she tries to develop new strategies to deal with human-environment interactions. Lately she is focusing on hidden operations of representation and knowledge organization.
Giorgia graduated in Energy Engineering from the University of Padua (Italy). At UNIDO, she focuses on technical assistance projects that promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in industries in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. She also co-authored studies on the impact of the adoption energy management systems and ISO 50001 in the industrial sector. She believes that equal inclusion of women is a crucial element in the clean energy transition.
Katharina has more than 9 years professional experience in the area of sustainable energy technologies and has been involved in the sector from different aspects and sectors including public, private and academia. She studied environmental technologies, international relations, business administration, and law at the University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg (Germany), Technical University Vienna (Austria), University of Alicante (Spain), and Solvay Business School (Belgium). Both her academic background and professional experience combine different disciplines, which characterize her strength: working at the junction of nexus dimensions. At UNIDO she is working since 2014 on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in the department of energy and manages several cleantech projects, mainly in South East Asia.
Priyanka is a specialist working on the interlinkages between gender equality and climate change. She studied environmental economics and management, and has experience in integrating gender considerations throughout climate activities. As a Gender Expert for UNIDO, she promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment throughout UNIDO’s activities in industrial sectors.
Daniela is a UX enthusiast that loves to share her passion about Usability, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, and Design. What she really enjoys about being a UX designer is working with various professions and exploring new business fields by "looking behind the scenes". Her goal is to create digital concepts and applications that support their users instead of aggravating them. Currently Daniela is working at Cloudflight (former Catalysts) as UI/UX Designer where she helps to break down and solve complex problems in various teams. Prior to Cloudflight she spent 2 years at the University of Applied Science in St. Pölten in the HCI research group.
Huma Hamid is a tech-maker by heart a volunteer by soul, with a passion to build digital products, platforms, teams, and communities. She is currently part of the platform technology group within Learning@Cisco as a technical product manager, and the Cofounder and former President at Pakistani Women in Computing (PWiC), a USA based non-profit organization, and an AnitB.org affiliated global STEM community. During her 15+ years of journey in tech, she has been part of several R&D and engineering groups focused on building digital platforms and products to serve industries like infrastructure and construction engineering, network and communication engineering, digital learning and customer experience. In tech, she has led a curiosity-driven career and wore multiple hats across all the different stages of a software development life cycle. She believes in taking charge of her personal development and growth and providing equal access to learning and growth opportunities for everyone . Huma is also part of several global STEM communities and actively volunteers for causes impacting people and technology.
Melanie Balaz works as Software Developer and studies Informatics at the University of Vienna. She is particularly interested in combining IT and science and is currently involved in an Neuroinformatics research project working with EEG and paralysed patients. She is very passionate about sharing knowledge and getting people excited about the endless possibilities of technology.
"In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years." - Abraham Lincoln. Timea is the co-founder of Women Techmakers Vienna and is currently building a social startup. Her two big passions are knowledge representation and community. Lately she focuses on topics like leadership and diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIBs).
My approach to problem-solving is social science meets technology meets creative culture. I use it from advising early stage startups on how to launch their business and optimise their product to top brands on how to communicate and innovate. I also use it for my own entrepreneurial endeavours.
I am a female engineer who has been working in the engineering sector since 2011. I originally come from South Africa, where I started my career as an Engineer in Training (EIT) when working at a power station (generation). I then moved into the electrical distribution environment where I was a performance enhancement engineer. In this role I was responsible for improving the performance of the electricity distribution networks (eg, fault finding, analysis and problem solving). This included conducting various line inspections and cable replacement. My work also included finding solutions to ensure that large birds (vultures, eagles etc) are not harmed by electrical apparatus. I then moved to Austria, where I began working within a research environment. In this role I have worked on EU projects which investigates new smart grid technologies. I have a good perception of the differences between first world and third world technologies within the electrical engineering sector. I have worked in a male dominant environment and have presented a presentation where I have shown that one is able to be a successful women in engineering, without the need to lose ones femininity.
Carolyn (she/her) is a frontend developer and former journalist based in Berlin, Germany. She's currently working at Meeshkan, a machine learning startup based in Helsinki. Out of the office, she’s a Mozilla Tech Speaker and organizer of the BerlinJS and QueerJS meetups. You’ll usually find her taking selfies in the nearest restroom mirror.
Ulrike joined her first open source project 7 years ago and quickly became involved, currently as Vice Chairman of Drupal Austria. In 2017 she co-founded Open Minds - the Austrian Open Source Award & Open Source Ball [an event with more than 400 participants to highlight and celebrate Austrian open source heroes and heroines]. In her professional life she is working as a Requirements Engineer/Product Owner and Scrum Master at Catalysts/Cloudflight. But the latest of her projects seems to be the most important one: Matilda, born in September 2018.