One of the reasons that we thought of initiating this center is that TDB has a relatively large number of women doing research. In our experience, it becomes easier to recruite women graduate students if there are already several women at the department. At the moment we have 4 women senior researchers and 6 women graduate students at the department. We have also had a number of women guest professors. We hope that the center will help women to get to know other women in our discipline, which in turn might have positive effects on the recruitment of women to our subject throughout the country.

To initiate the network, we tried to get into contact with all women researchers, both seniors and PhD students, in scientific computing. We sent a letter to key persons at all universities and colleges in the country, asking for the names of their women researchers.

The first meeting was held November 19, 2001 at TDB. The day was divided into two parts. We began with scientific presentations given by the participants and then we continued more informally with discussions about future work within the center.