Fariba Karimi nominated for Hedy Lamarr Award

“Exceptional achievements in the field of information technology”

We are happy to announce the nomination of our team leader Fariba Karimi for the 2021 Hedy Lamarr Award of the City of Vienna.

The prize aims to recognize Austrian female scientists for their exceptional achievements in the field of information technology.

According to a press release accompanying the nomination, the award wants “to highlight and strengthen the role and importance of women in IT. The award winners serve as role models for the next generation and motivate young women to take up a profession in the IT industry.”

This year’s nominees

“I’m really honored to be among these six fantastic women,” says Fariba, who just built up a team at the Hub to (further) work on algorithmic biases in social networks and their impact on disadvantaged groups.

Ceremony in October

The winner of the Hedy Lamarr Award 2021 will be announced on October 19 at a ceremony during the Digital Days 2021.

The award is named after Vienna-born Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000), an emigrated jewish actress who not only became famous as Hollywood diva and “the most beautiful woman in the world” in the 1930s and 1940s, but who was also a gifted inventor.

Among other things, Hedy Lamarr contributed to an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication, a technology that eventually made Bluetooth and WLAN possible.

The Hedy Lamarr Award is sponsored by the City of Vienna in cooperation with UIV— Urban Innovation Vienna and the DigitalCity.Wien Initiative.