Meet Team DEIGirls
Introducing team CookieMonster… err, I mean, team DEIGirls
Who are we?
Hello world! We are Inês and Rosa, two crazy girls from Coimbra, Portugal.
Together with Christian Weyer, Pablo Porto and Tiago Mendes-Costa (our beloved coaches) we make the team DEIGirls, under the supervising of Alex Williams!
The elements of Team DEIGirls (Image: Team DEIGirls)
Rosa:
I’m the craziest and cookie-addicted 27-year-old girl who has a Master’s Degree in some other engineering stuff that decided that programming was her thing.
I learned programming in my previous degree and was fascinated. When I finished it I wasn’t satisfied so I enrolled in Computer Science, in the University of Coimbra. That’s where I re-met Inês (we had crossed paths before but never actually talked, isn’t the world a crazy place?). I looooove my dog Nancy (she’s the love of my life) and dancing (someone told me I’m amazingly light for my sturdy build hehehe).
Inês:
I’m the calmer one, the centerpiece of this team… who am I kidding, I am as crazy as Rosa!
So, I’m currently doing the Master’s Degree in Software Engineering, at the University of Coimbra. Before that, I studied Biochemistry and performed scientific research in toxicology and neuroscience. But that was not the life for me, so here I am, turned into a programmer ;) I’m also involved with the Girls community in Coimbra: I organize Girls Lean In events, regular meetups were we invite powerful women from our community to talk about their experience in order to empower others and inspire them to pursue their goals, and I take part in IEEE Women in Engineering group at Coimbra. My long-time flatmate is a Cookie. Don’t worry, I keep Rosa away from him.
How did you two meet?
Actually Coimbra is a small city so we kind of bumped into each other a lot before we really talked. Our first conversation was in a washing room at the Department of Informatics Engineering where we both studied. Althought the department is a crowded place, there are not that many girls around so when we met in the washing room we were both like “wow, this is the first time I’ve ever seen another girl in the washing room in this building.” And that was the beginning of a great friendship!
How did you hear about RGSoC?
I (Inês) learned about the RGSoC when I participated in a Rails Girls event at Braga where Erik Michaels-Ober and Duana Stanley from SoundCloud did a talk about their involvement in the program. When I found out that the applications for this summer edition were open, I contacted Rosa and made her an offer that she could not refuse! A few hours later we were together in a cafe, contacting the Rails community and starting our application.
Why team DEIGirls?
Because we study in the Department of Informatics Engineering (in Portuguese, Departamento de Engenharia Informática - DEI) and we are girls (surprise!). Simple as that!
The girls from Team DEIGirls (Image: Team DEIGirls)
What project are you working on?
We are working on Lotus, a web framework for Ruby. We will be doing the mailer gem for that project, guided by our mentors Luca Guidi and Trung Lê.
What are you most looking forward to this summer?
Learning a lot and contributing to an open source project, while having an immense amount of fun. And eat cookies!