Marwa Salayma, who is one of the PhD students in the School of Computing, recently recorded an interview about her journey from Palestine to doctoral studies at Edinburgh Napier University.

In this three minute video Marwa relates her enthusiasm for computing as a career and her optimism for her future job prospects, the encouragement that her family has given her to succeed (she is one of seven daughters), and the highly successful female role models in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University who inspire and motivate her (myself, Professor Jessie Kennedy, Professor Emma Hart, and Dr Sally Smith). She also speaks quite personally about some challenges that she faced as a teenager, and imposter syndrome as experienced by PhD students.

My favourite quotation from the interview is this: ‘Boys can survive whatever their situation. The power of a girl is her education and her qualification.‘