Posters celebrating diversity in computing


Free posters (to download) for your classroom

Celebrating diversity in computer science

Download the posters as PDF or .pptx

We currently have two versions of the posters, the muted colourway, in sepia, greys and light blues and the original more vibrant colours. We would be interested to know which you prefer.

The vibrant colourway is here.

Posters celebrating diversity – vibrant colours

For the muted colourway, you can print the PDF for your classroom, or download an editable .pptx set and add your own information.

You can also use the PowerPoint file as a rolling presentation on a screen, we have another on-screen display version here for 16:9 format (see gif below).

Please let us know how you’re using these resources, we’d love to hear more via Twitter (@cs4fn) or email cs4fn@eecs.qmul.ac.uk

Licence
The posters are made available under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA licence which means you are welcome to share and adapt them for your own needs (non-commercial use only) while crediting us and if you share adapted versions then you need must make them available under the same licence and credit us.

We hope that you and your class will find the posters inspiring and that it encourages your students to find out more, but we also hope that they will work in the background too, to normalise the fact that computer scientists come in all varieties. There are people of different gender,  ages and ethnicities in the poster set and we will be adding more people.

List of people on the posters so far (in alphabetical order by their forename)

Abdigani (Abdi) Diriye: Somalia tech startups

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Setting up tech start-up accelerator boot camps, coding camps, mentoring programmes and tech funding opportunities in Somali and Somaliland Abdi brings his expertise in computing to help local technology infrastructure grow and work towards solving the challenges facing Africa.

Find out more


Ada Lovelace: Pioneer programmerAda Lovelace

Daughter of Lord Byron, the infamous English poet, Ada was no ordinary young woman of the 1800’s. Known as the first programmer, she predicted that computers would be far more than adding machines.

Find out more


Alan Turing: The grandfather of computer science29 Alan Turing from RS

The ‘Turing Machine’, the `Turing Test’ and  Bletchley Park code-breaking,  make Alan Turing one of the most influential and famous English computer scientists. Defining fundamentals of what defines a computer and what defines an AI underpin computer science today.

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Anne-Marie Imafidon: STEMettesAnne Marie Imafidon

Anne-Marie Imafidon, aged only 11 was the youngest girl to pass an A level in Computing and was only 20 when she passed a Master’s degree in Maths & Computer Science. With such a passion for STEM she co-founded STEMettes a programme to inspire young women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths!

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Annie Easley: Rocket mathsAnnie Easley

Annie’s code was used to fly rockets and laid the foundations for space shuttle launches. Her focus was on solving energy problems, including wind and solar projects.

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Barbara Liskov: Programming Languages17 barbara_liskov_mit_computer_scientist_2010-magic

Barbara Liskov’s work in the theory of programming languages has been used as the foundation of object-oriented programming. She has also developed cunning algorithms which cope with computers failing in unexpected ways. This may sound unimportant but is, in fact, vital to the reliability and accuracy of distributed systems, like services provided on the Internet.

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Carrie Anne Philbin: Geek Gurl Diariescarrieannesepia

Carrie Anne makes computing cool! She has been writing her diary on YouTube for years now. But it’s not about mundane stuff, it’s about technology and making.

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Christine Farion: Wearable TechnologyChristine Farion

Christine’s research of forgetfulness has resulted in some beautiful and very useful products which use embedded sensors. Using shop scanners to check what has been popped in your bag, a tiny light displays whether you have remembered your keys.

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Cynthia Bennett: Access for all

Making sure that technology can be accessed by everyone is Cynthia’s goal. Her research area is Human-Computer Interaction but with a focus on assistive technology for those with disabilities.

Find out more


Dorcas Muthoni: Mentoring in Africa3 dorcasquadrehonoris

Dorcas is in the top 100 Lionesses, a list of the top African Women Entrepreneurs.  Not only does she run a highly successful tech firm she is a fierce advocate for women in tech she set up AfChix which is a chapter of LinuxChix. What are all these Chix?

Find out more


Evelyn Boyd Granville: Space Software

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Early space travel required software with some very complicated mathematics. Evelyn Boyd Granville was the right mathematician for the job. She became a computer programmer working on space mission projects. Celestial mechanics, trajectory and orbit computations all needed her maths skills.

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Fei-Fei Li:  Vision and diversity to create AI4Allfei-fei-li_profilephoto

Having trailblazed machine learning vision processing,  Fei-Fei is now a professor of Human-Centred AI. She is dedicated to making sure that AI  is created by and works for everyone.

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Florence Nightingale: Important InfographicsFlorence Nightingale

The” Lady of the Lamp”, Florence Nightingale,  was not only one of the most famous nurses in history she was also a trailblazing Victorian statistician who used data to save lives.

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Fran Allen: Compilers – Clever TranslationFran Allen

Getting computers to do what you want, used to be very difficult.  Programming languages were very complicated and hard to understand. People like Grace Hopper and Fran Allen changed all this by their work on compilers.

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Gladys West: Satellite positioning

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Gladys West’s work on accurate positions of satellites underpins satnav and other location-aware services we rely on. She also worked on the first sea observation satellite, vital in understanding climate change.

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Grace Hopper: Readable code and bugs16 commodore_grace_m._hopper,_usn_(covered)-magic

Grace Hopper was a pioneer in the world of computer science. She had a very sensible idea which revolutionised the programming languages that we use. No more bizarre strings of letters and numbers we can use English words now.

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Hedy Lamarr: Frequency hopping star19hedy_lamarr_publicity_photo_for_the_heavenly_body_1944-magic

Both an inventor and a movie star, Hedy Lamarr had a great idea of how to protect radio transmissions from being jammed by those who should not be listening in.

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Holly Kay: Pa11y and Pair Programming

Being a deaf developer, Holly Kay found pair programming very challenging as she had to lip read as well as look at the screen. She came up with a solution, help develop an accessibility tool for everyone – Pa11y.

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Jeanette Wing: Computational thinking for all18 jeannette-wing-magic

Jeanette Wing has been closely associated with the idea of computational thinking for many years and has worked to promote is as a set of skills that are useful for everyone.

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John Henry Thompson: Art lingo12-johnhenry-magic.jpg

John Henry Thompson created a novel new programming language which helps developers incorporate art when programming when they are developing games, websites and other digital products.

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Juliana Rotich: Crowdsourcing in a crisis

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When a crisis occurs, sometimes the only people who know what is going on, are the people in the middle of the disaster. Juliana helped develop a system which gave those people the opportunity to share the picture on the ground.

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Karen Spärck Jones: Search Engineskaren_spärck2

Karen Spärk Jones famously said that computer science was ‘too important to be left to men.’ It is a good job that she did as she recommended as her work on search engines is now used almost every time we ‘google’ something.

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Katherine Johnson: Space calculationsKatherine Johnson

Working out how to put a man on the moon needed lots of hard maths. Katherine Johnson was one of the women whose mathematical expertise was critical to space success.

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Kimberly Bryant: Black Girls Code

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Kimberly Bryant’s personal experience of being a black female electronics engineer led her to found Black Girls Code. Focusing on gender and race as overlapping social identities the educational group teaches 6-17 year-old girls from underrepresented communities skills in computer programming and technology.

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Louis Braille: Binary BrailleLouis Braille 2 (1)

When the blind Louis Braille invented Braille as a way to enable blind people to read, he also invented the world’s first widely used binary representation of characters. The same idea now underpins the way digital computers store characters.

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Martha Lane Fox: Computer Science Politics4 martha_lane-fox_at_sprint14

There are far fewer women working in technology than men. Why? Martha Lane Fox champions solving this problem through both charity work and in her job. She is a Member of the House of Lords, the youngest ever.

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Mary Lou Jepsen: Invention and equity6 mary_lou_jepsen_in_lab-magic

Researcher and inventor of optical light products, Mary Lou Jepson has a talent for seeing ahead of the field. Exploiting holography and virtual reality she has created artworks and medical devices that delight and revolutionise.

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Michelle Simmons: Atomic electronics and Quantum ComputersMichele_Simmons_Royal_Society

Atomic electronics what on earth is that? Michelle Simmons knows! She is a world-leading expert on building the tiniest computer components ever, only as big as a single atom. Can atomic components be used to create quantum computers? Michelle Simmons knows!   

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Pernille Bjorn: Equitable collaborative computing and Atari women

Pernille Bjorn

Today collaborative IT-systems are part of everyday life and work around the globe. However, not all people have the same conditions for taking advantage of these systems and engaging in designing and developing them. Pernille Bjorn’s research seeks to ensure equity for all no matter profession, gender, race, or geography to gain access and shape the technology world we live in. She has also created a cool way to learn about famous women game designers – you play a game!

Find out more.


Safiya Umoja Noble: Bias in search engines

Safiya Noble

Sociologist Safiya Noble’s research on ethics in technology has drawn attention to race and gender in algorithms. Her book “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism” looks at how bias against people of colour can be (even unintentionally) incorporated in search engine algorithms.

Find out more


Shafi Goldwasser: Zero-Knowledge10shafi_goldwasser-magic28229

Using a credit card when shopping online is an everyday occurrence that could only happen because of  Shafi Goldwasser’s research. To keep our online transactions secure there is some clever logic and fiendish maths.

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Segun Fatumo: Bioinformatics13 segun fatumo (5)

UK-based Segun Fatumo has put his computing know-how to use in genetic research and bioinformatics, studying the genetic basis of cardiovascular and infectious diseases in African populations.

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Shwetal Shah:  Tools to teach & Digital Activist

Shwetal Shah

Shwetal is a young entrepreneur and youth representative who worked with a company who developed a fun platform which teaches coding. By representing young people with government groups, she is championing the need for inclusion in tech.

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Sophie Wilson: Chip DesignSophie Wilson EPO13

Sophie Wilson designed the chip for the BBC Micro. This was one of the most popular early personal computers. Sophie also co-designed the chip (the ARM processor) that is in almost all mobile phones as well as in tablets, TV’s …

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Susan Wojcicki: Marketing Ads20 susan_wojcicki_2016-magic (1)

A top director at Google, Susan Wojcicki has been named as one of the most important people in Marketing.  As well as managing YouTube she has also led on Adwords a powerful product that makes it easier for companies to sell to us.

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Tina Chowdhury: Bioengineering

Tina Chowdhury

Tina saves and improves lives by combining biology, engineering, computer science and technology. Leading a cutting edge team of experts, her group researches how to repair and replace soft tissue such as the membrane surrounding babies in the womb and arthritic knee joints.

Find out more 


Dame Wendy Hall:  Web Science

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Dame Wendy Hall was one of the first people to research multimedia and hypermedia, even before the web existed.  Multimedia is online products such as text, video, photographs and sound files. Hypermedia is the linking of these products using tagged knowledge. Dame Wendy Hall is a key figure in the development of the Web and Web Science.

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This work was supported by the Institute of Coding, which is supported by the Office for Students (OfS).


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