The winners of all previous editions of the Feedzai Women in Science MSc and PhD scholarship (2022, 2023, and 2024) met again to share experiences and reflect on their academic pathways. The lunch took place on 10 July at Feedzai‘s offices in Parque das Nações, Lisbon.

The event brought together the winners of the previous editions – Inês Simões, Alexandra Pato, and Ana Filipa Lino, winners of the 2024 edition, Leonor Barreiros, awarded in 2023, and Maria Osório, Mariana Lima, and Isabel Portugal, winners in 2022 – members of the jury, including the Técnico professors Mário Figueiredo and Alexandre Bernardino, and company representatives Pedro Bizarro, co-founder and chief science officer at Feedzai, and Sofia Gomes, systems researcher at Feedzai.

The meeting provided an opportunity for socialising and dialogue between generations of scholarship recipients, allowing them to share their experiences at Técnico, exchange views on the challenges in the academic world, and reflect on the impact of the scholarship on their educational pathways. The students highlighted the importance of this support as an incentive to continue their education in predominantly male-dominated fields, such as engineering and data science.

The lunch marked the beginning of an active network among the scholarship winners, Instituto Superior Técnico, and Feedzai, which aims to foster connections between academia and the business sector, encouraging more women to pursue careers in STEM fields.