What is Pulsar?
We need to address the gender imbalance in STEM jobs
Only 15% of people currently working in STEM careers in Northern Ireland are women. But STEM careers are well paid, interesting and in-demand.
We want to encourage more girls to study core STEM subjects
If we can encourage more women into STEM careers and support them to stay there, we could go a long way to solving Northern Ireland’s skills shortages.
Pulsar has resources for businesses, students, entrepreneurs and STEM professionals
This site promotes NI STEM role models and supporting organisations, as well as bringing together NI STEM events, resources and reports.
Why Pulsar?
Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS FRSE FRAS FInstP is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, co-discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. She was credited with “one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century”.
The discovery was recognised by the award of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, but despite the fact that she was the first to observe the pulsars, Bell was not one of the recipients of the prize.
In 2018, she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Following the announcement of the award, she decided to give the whole of the £2.3 million prize money to help female, minority, and refugee students seeking to become physics researchers, the funds to be administered by the Institute of Physics. The resulting bursary scheme is known as the “Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund”.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an inspiration to all women working in STEM.
In the news
Northern Ireland astrophysicist Rosemary Coogan to join ESA as career astronaut
Northern Ireland born astrophysicist Rosemary Coogan has been named as one of just five new European Space Agency career astronauts selected from a field of 22,500 applicants. The new class of 17 astronaut candidates, who will work on missions to [...]
Six months of Pulsar on TikTok – what do we know?
We are currently running three pilot programmes to help encourage young people in Northern Ireland into STEM careers - our most experimental (and challenging!) pilot is now at its halfway point so we wanted to let you know how [...]
Diversity Mark accredited company Cubis Systems – Creating an inclusive culture is a win for employees and a win for the bottom line
Cubis Systems are manufacturers of underground systems for infrastructure, the organisation currently employs over 650 staff at several sites globally with their headquarters based in Lurgan. Cubis are currently bronze accredited and striving towards silver accreditation with Diversity Mark in [...]
There are currently no vacancies.
Reports on Women in STEM
Selected reports which highlight or address the skills shortage in STEM and how greater gender diversity could help solve the problem.
Women in engineering
Although engineering continues to be a male-dominated profession, since 2010 both the percentage and number of women in engineering roles has increased. This report from Engineering UK uses data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to explore this trend in more detail, focusing on which engineering roles and industries have seen the most progress, in terms of gender balance – and which have seen the least.