Girl Geek Dinner #5

Speaker: Hester Bijl
Title: Flying Lessons from a Fly
Date: Tuesday, 21 April, 2009
Time: 7-11 PM
Location: Flexbar (Pazzanistraat 1, Amsterdam)
Cost: 22.50 Euros (buffet dinner, excluding drinks)

The Flexbar is located on the Westergasfabriek terrain.

Abstract:

Flies are true acrobats in the air. They can hover and even fly backwards! Therefore, for our development of small, flapping, aircraft we can learn a lot from them.

One of the activities in my research group is to simulate air flow around flapping wings in order to better understand the performance of insect flight. Approximating the solution to the physical flow equations
with mathematical techniques, we can compute flight performance quantities, such as lift and drag. Since these are time and memory space intensive computations, efficiency is of utmost importance.

With the insights obtained from analyzing the flow solution of the simulation, we hope to contribute to the design of Delfly Micro – a tiny flapping micro air vehicle developed at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology. Delfly Micro is the smallest in the Delfly series. While the original Delfly has a 20 cm wing span, Delfly Micro only has 5 cm wing span. Due to the small wings aerodynamic performance is very important.

Speaker Bio:

Prof.dr.drs.ir. Hester Bijl is full professor Computational Aerodynamics at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology. She studied Applied Math in Delft, as well as English in Leiden. After her studies she decided to become a PhD-student in Delft, developing a new method for the computation of flows with both high and low speeds regions. After her PhD she worked a little less than two years as management consultant for The Boston Consulting Group. Since October 1999 she works at the Aerospace Engineering faculty in Delft, starting as assistant professor. In april 2006 she was appointed full professor – the first female professor at the Aerospace Engineering Faculty of the TU Delft. As department chair, Hester now is a member of the management team of the Faculty. She has a partner and two sons (6 and 7 years old).

Amsterdam GirlGeekDinner

Speaker: Frances Brazier
Date: Monday 12 January, 2009
Time: 7-11 PM
Location:  Flexbar @ Westergasfabriek (Pazzanistraat 1, Amsterdam)
Cost: 22.50 Euros (buffet dinner, excluding drinks)

Title:
You do not like green eggs and ham?
(Tales of when Sam-I-Am had something else in mind..)

Abstract:
Expectations -- both our own and those of others -- strongly influence
our careers. Dealing with these expectations can be a challenge!
Throughout my life and my academic career, I have encountered numerous
choices, surprises, and life-lessons. Pain can be minimized by learning
from others -- so in this talk, I will share some of the lessons that I
and my collegues have learned along the way

Speaker Bio:
Frances Brazier is a Professor of Computer Science at the Vrije
Universiteit in Amsterdam, chairing the Intelligent Interactive
Distributed Systems Group (www.iids.org). She has published significantly
in the areas of Autonomous Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agent
Systems, Distributed Systems, Web Services, and Human-Computer
Interfaces, and is currently a member of the editorial board of AI in
Design and Manufacturing and a new book series on Autonomic Systems.
Beyond her academic career Frances has also been involved in numerous
ventures including NLnet, the first ISP in the Netherlands. Frances is
also a Board member of the Landelijk Netwerk Vrouwelijke Hoogleraren.

http://www.girlgeekdinner.nl
Speaker: Julie LermanTitle: Staying dry while drinking from the technology firehose

Date: Wednesday 8 October, 2008

Time: 7-11 PM

Location: Flexbar @ Westergasfabriek (Pazzanistraat 1, Amsterdam)

Cost: 22.50 Euros (buffet dinner, excluding drinks)Abstract:

Julie Lerman has been programming for over 20 years, with the glorious

beginnings of a single BASIC computer class while acquiring a degree in

Russian history. At her first job (nothing to do with history) the only

computer in a company of over 1000 people quickly ended up on her desk.

Since then she has used about 10 programming languages, but it took 13

years before she attended her first programming class. Julie will talk to

the Amsterdam Girl Geeks about the challenge of trying to remain sane

while keeping up with constantly changing technology and some of the extra

challenges that being a girl geek added along the way.

Biography:

Julie Lerman is an independent consultant and .NET Mentor who has been

designing and writing software applications for over 20 years. Julie is

the author of “Programming Entity Framework” (O’Reilly) and is well known

in the .NET community as a Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider and INETA Speaker.

She is a prolific blogger, a frequent presenter at conferences around the

world and author of articles in many technical publications. Julie lives

in the tiny U.S. state of Vermont where she runs the Vermont.NET User

Group and serves on the board of the Vermont Software Developers Alliance.

You can read Julie’s blog at www.thedatafarm.com/blog