Finding Ada - Recognition for unseen women in science and technology

I have to admit that Ada Lovelace Day is a new one for me, but the cause seems worthy and so I will do my bit and (happily) contribute.

The woman I wish to recognize on Ada Lovelace Day is Nina Kristiansen, the editor and director of forskning.no.

Forskning.no ("forskning" is the Norwegian word for research) is a Norwegian-language website dedicated to dissemination of national and international research findings in all disciplines. It is owned by 53 private and public research and education institutions in Norway, including the Norwegian Research Council and all of the universities in Norway. The website is energetic, informative, interactive and consistently updated with contributions from competent journalists. Its obvious and well-achieved purpose is to make research interesting and accessible to every Norwegian. The website boasts of almost 200,000 readers every month, 25% of which do not have higher education, and 10% of which are under 19 years old!

I think Nina Kristiansen and her colleagues deserve recognition on this occasion for maintaining a fresh, freely-accessible, apolitical and fantastic online popular science repository for all Norwegians. That Ms. Kristiansen is neither the founder of forskning.no nor a card-carrying techie/nerd per se is, in my opinion, irrelevant. The skill involved in getting people, particularly young people, interested in multi-disciplinary research that may not be directly relevant for them, and in a time when people are generally overstimulated already, is no small feat. With the amount of information available online these days, we as individuals have no excuses for not trying to make some effort to keep up with it. Websites like forskning.no make the keeping-up bit low-stress, entertaining and educational. Well done, and many good years to come!

source: Forskerforum: Tidsskrift for Forskerforbundet, november 2009 Nummer 9 Årgang 41 "Sogeseljaren" av Per Anders Todal