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The participants, of which more than 75% are female students, have been awarded in the first phase with a technological introduction course at the UMA. This course consists of a series of training activities and practical workshops mainly lectured by female university researchers and professionals from the Chair’s collaborating companies.
Students in the third and fourth year of Secondary Education, Baccalaureate or Vocational Training are participating in the Hedy Lamarr Chair Challenge, an initiative that aims to involve young girls by proposing ideas in the form of videos in which they had to answer the question ‘How could you improve the world around you with 5G?
Once the first phase was completed on 28 February, which consisted of sending videos with the ideas of each participant, individually or in groups. This phase had a high level of participation (17 classified videos in which a total of 69 students participated, of which more than 75% were female students) and the second part started last Friday. The winners got a technological introduction course at the University of Málaga, a series of training activities which, above all, will be practical workshops mostly lectured by female researchers and professionals from the collaborating companies of the Chair and the UMA.
The competition has not only sought to address the improvements that can be achieved by favouring communication between people, but also that the direct connection between devices can be useful to improve people’s health, children’s education or the state of the planet, all of which are part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Once this second phase has been completed, a final stage of the challenge, the Hilda Ericsson competition, will allow students to have the opportunity to work in groups to further develop their proposals. The training achieved in the second phase will allow the ideas initially proposed to be redesigned, giving them consistency and taking into account their technical feasibility. For a few weeks, participants will have access to university laboratories to develop a prototype, with the help of a group of mentors. From all the prototypes, Ericsson Spain will select one to be awarded the Hilda Ericsson Award 2022, consisting of a 5G mobile phone.
What is the Hedy Lamarr Chair’s challenge?
The Hedy Lamarr Chair challenge is an activity that develops students’ technological skills while fostering their connection and engagement with the environment. In addition, it brings participants closer to the professional reality in the field of mobile communications, enhances their critical thinking and gives them tools to understand the dimension of technology.
In this way, teamwork and collaborative learning are also promoted, allowing the girls to create new networks with an interest in technology and fostering the development of their communication skills.
The theme that has served as a common thread for the challenge has been the technologies for fifth generation mobile communications (5G), which is currently being implemented.
About the Chair
The University of Málaga, through the School of Telecommunications Engineering, has launched the ‘Hedy Lammar’ Chair for Women and Technology, whose main objectives are to promote activities that contribute to the participation of women in technology; to contribute to the empowerment of women in technology companies; and to increase their presence in the degrees in this sector.
This chair, which is directed by the professor of Communications Engineering, María del Carmen Aguayo Torres, has counted with the participation of Málaga TechPark in its implementation, as well as with the collaboration of several companies in the park, such as Accenture, DEKRA Testing and Certification, Ericsson Spain, Keysight Technologies and Avanade, as well as Google Ireland Limited -member of the Málaga TechPark Execs Executives Club- and Metro Málaga, which all act as patrons of the same. The School of Computer Science, the School of Industrial Engineering and the MECYT also participate in this initiative.
With this chair, the UMA becomes a transmitter of the concerns of companies to society. Thus, the core of the project is aimed at schools and institutes, to carry out activities, all of them with a gender vision.
In addition, this chair aims to make contributions to open and in-company continuous training programmes, in order to improve the female contribution to technology, as well as to encourage the participation of female students in technological degrees by means of study grants and awards for final projects.