Kristiane is a Norwegian studying at Denmark’s Technical University. She is currently enrolled in BSc. in Engineering in Strategic Analysis and System Design and works as a student assistant at Dansk Industri.
Kristiane’s interest in STEM was formed because as far as she can remember she has been fascinated by astronomy, and the world around her. This led to her huge interest in physics, which is the reason she chooses physics and mathematics as her core subjects in high school. In high school, she heard about the world of computer science and the number of opportunities that exist in that field. Kris took up programming during that time, which she thinks, she was horrible at, but still chose never to give up. Now when asked what is one thing that she could go back and tell her younger self, then it is the fact that her entire field is based around programming. Nowadays Kristiane’s entire day consists of programming and playing with data using the most modern and high-tech methods that exist. Along with her studies, she has already taken a step into the working-world where she works at DI – Dansk Industri (Danish Industry) as a student assistant in their department for Strategic CRM.
The field of Strategic Analysis and System Design is a fairly new field of engineering at Denmark’s Technical University relative to some of the other fields offered, such as electrical, chemical or mechanical engineering. With this degree, there are many opportunities offered all around the globe and it is now an essential part of every company. According to Kristiane, “People in my profession work with big loads of data and try to unlock underlying information provided. This can be done with different machine learning or statistics methods.” These methods and skills are very useful to have, as they can be used to optimise profit, detect health issues and diagnose sickness, maybe predict the weather, or even tell your car where it should go to make it to the next appointment on time.
Kristiane whole-heartedly agrees with us that women are missing in STEM fields, and she came to this conclusion through her own personal experience. She does believe, to get girls interested in STEM, it is important to introduce women in the business that can be used as examples, as this shows that being a female in these fields is possible. Networking is extremely important among women, so that we can all share our experiences and co-operate on bringing more girls into the field of STEM.
For the women who are already in STEM, Kristiane would wish for them to be offered equal payments as their male counterparts. She believes, there should be no prejudice on how women behave, because many times people have pre-made notions that women can be snobby. Women should also be given more expectations. Usually, people do not fill expectations that are not there, so if there was an higher expectation from women, then the women would definitely push the limits to reach those.
To encourage young girls, Kristiane strongly believes that introducing early programming is a huge step to get girls interested. She believes that there should be more STEM-related events. This way high-schoolers get a better chance of being able to decide what they want to study and do in the future at university. As many just follow the pre-defined notions of what they can do or cannot do.
Lastly, here are Kristiane’s closing words of encouragement for young girls who want to join a STEM field:
“Just because it's challenging doesn't mean it's not right, don't be afraid to fail, if it was easy everyone would have done it!”
You can contact Kristiane Bratlie on LinkediIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristianebratlie/
I thank Kristiane for taking part in our part in my project and answering all the questions in a very informative manner. I hope, we will be able to use your profile to aspire a young girl to be like you and join a STEM field and excel just like you.