WIT Talk with Noor Afshan Fathima, CERN IT accessibility studies' ally

<!--HTML--><p>Noor Afshan Fathima is a Fullstack Engineer with CERN IT’s Search-As-A-Service project. She has been a volunteer at the Open Source community since 2011 with a focus on introducing students to open source philosophy and helping them migrate to open source. She has&nbsp;volunteered at a local specially-abled children’s school in India on certain occasions. She is a&nbsp;recipient of&nbsp;the Google Women TechMakers Scholarship and IEEE Computer Society's Richard E. Merwin Scholarship.<br /> Noor participated in the 2021 edition of CERN’s Global Webfest, where she pitched the idea for “Crowdsourced designs, 3D printed enhancements for the disabled” (<a href="https://webfest.cern/node/339" target="_blank">https://webfest.cern/node/339</a>) which stems from the open-source philosophy of open collaboration model where the able-bodied world&nbsp;can&nbsp;contribute to building custom enhancements suited for each disabled person’s needs. This idea was prototyped during the weekend and won first place. In addition, she is a volunteer at Hackahealth Foundation (<a href="https://www.hackahealth.ch/" target="_blank">https://www.hackahealth.ch/</a>)&nbsp;which fosters a community that operates on similar ideologies&nbsp;at Campus Biotech in Geneva&nbsp;(<a href="https://www.campusbiotech.ch/en/">https://www.campusbiotech.ch/en/</a>) and is collaborating on Team Caroline (<a href="https://www.hackahealth.ch/project-caroline-2021">https://www.hackahealth.ch/project-caroline-2021</a>).<br /> Noor envisions forming more of these communities which will provide free and safe spaces for people like herself with disabilities to express their needs and build solutions in an inclusive and systematic approach, in collaboration with able-bodied people, thereby bridging the gap through consistent innovation&nbsp;for a healthier co-existence of all diverse individuals.</p> <p>Noor will be interviewed by <strong>Maria Dimou</strong>. Maria graduated in Physics from Athens university and Computing from the university of Brussels. After almost 5 years of permanent contract with IBM, she resigned to join a research environment. She is CERN IT dept. staff for 34 years. Her projects include the email gateway evolution, network configuration in the computer centre for the SHIFT project, Web operation and deputy Group Leader's role in the Web Office, Linux support, various Grid middleware packages in WLCG, the IT e-learning initiative, an investigation of Markdown for static documentation, a web-based Slides' maker and Solid - the Decentralised Web project by the Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. She loves human languages, is an amateur dancer and believes that <em>art should be a mandatory aspect of education and an important part of everybody's life.</em></p> <p>Noor and Maria both work&nbsp;in CERN IT.</p> <p><br /> <strong>Links:</strong></p> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://webfest.cern/node/339">https://webfest.cern/node/339</a></div> <div class="moz-cite-prefix"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.hackahealth.ch/hackathons-en">https://www.hackahealth.ch/hackathons-en</a></div>