Our Athena SWAN Award

In 2020, we successfully renewed our Athena SWAN Bronze Award – an award the Department has held since 2008.

The Athena SWAN Charter recognises commitment to advancing women's careers in science, and was established by the Equality Challenge Unit to recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research. The Charter has since been expanded to cover additional disciplines and addresses gender equality more broadly. The Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering currently holds an Athena Swan Bronze Award in recognition of our commitment to supporting and advancing the careers of women in STEM.

The Department's Athena SWAN Self Assessment Committee (SAT) is currently working on its four-year action plan. The action plan is based around four key Priority Areas:

Strengthen the capacities and communication channels of the Athena Swan SAT
Adress the recruitment and retention of our female postgraduate research students
Address key career transition points for academic and research staff
Change organisational culture and facilitate outreach

You can view the full action plan on the Department's Staff Intranet.

The reason for the launch of our Female Futures initiative, and why this field needs organisations like Athena SWAN, is a stark under-representation of women in physics and engineering. A report by the Institute of Physics in 2018 found that only 1.9% of girls study A level Physics compared to 6.5% of boys, despite the fact that girls perform just as well as boys in the subject at GCSE.

In addition to Female Futures, our department therefore has a dedicated Athena SWAN committee, chaired by Dr Charlotte Hagen. As Charlotte explains:

We strive for an equal representation on women and men in our subject area. We already regularly achieve a 50/50 gender balance on our courses, and our staff and students are 100% committed to promoting Physics and Engineering to female school students and early-career women who might not otherwise have considered these subjects as a career option. As a department, we're working very hard to spread the word — to girls and boys alike — about this exciting field of research and the many career routes a degree in Medical Physics or Biomedical Engineering can lead to."

The Athena SWAN Committee meets every month to ensure that our departmental culture, processes and career support mechanisms take into account the particular needs of staff and students, both male and female, with childcare or other caring responsibilities.

Athena SWAN Confidentiality Contacts

Name	Role	Email
Lynsey Duffell	Lecturer	l.duffell@ucl.ac.uk
James Vallerine	Departmental Manager	j.vallerine@ucl.ac.uk

Committee Members

Name	Role	Other roles
Dr Elly Martin	Principal Research Fellow	Athena SWAN Self Assessment Committee (SAT) Chair
Dr Andre Altmann	MRC Senior Research Fellow
Naomi Britton	Communications and Marketing Manager	Athena SWAN Support Officer
Bob Chan	Departmental Administrator
Dr Silvia Cipiccia	Associate Professor	EDI Chair
Prof Clare Elwell	Professor and Faculty Vice Dean for Impact
Dr Michela Esposito	Research Fellow	Female Futures Co-Lead
Gabriela Flores Lopez	PGT student
Dr Pilar Garcia Souto	Principal Teaching Fellow
Dr Charlotte Hagen	RAEng Research Fellow
Eve Hatten	Teaching Lab Manager
Dr Mina Kim	Senior Research Fellow
Dr Henry Lancashire	Lecturer
Cindy Leung	Hawkes Institute Administrator
Dr Grammatiki Lioliou	Senior Research Fellow
Prof Peter Munro	Professor	Head of Department
Dr Sacha Noimark	EPSRC Fellow	Women@WEISS co-lead
Vanshika Sharma	PGT Student
James Vallerine	Departmental Manager
Dr Rebecca Yerworth	Principal Teaching Fellow