Alma Mater

I wasn't a person who raved about school, but I didn't dislike it. My view was that it was something I had to do, so I got on with it. One of the great things about Alexandra College, Dublin, which I attended from the age of eight, was that it offered a full range of science subjects. We did honours physics, chemistry and maths, which was unusual in a girls' school in the 1960s. During my time there, Lilian Brooks, our maths teacher, even introduced applied maths.

Alex was great - they took the view that whatever you wanted to do, you should go for it. Nonetheless, they were astounded when I told them that I wanted to do engineering. My father - Professor William Wright - was an engineer and my older brother had just completed engineering when I started. At home, my brothers used to play with crystal sets and Meccano. My father didn't try to influence me, but he showed clearly the creation and design that is involved in engineering. People tend to think of engineering as a bit dull, but it's not. It's very creative. Engineering is all about making things and then perfecting them.

I went to Trinity College to study engineering. It was a very male environment. I was the only girl in the class and the first woman to graduate in engineering. There were 30 in the class. I remember our first lecture. The lecturer came in to tell us about the drawing instruments we would need. I overheard one student asking another: "Who's she?". "The prof's daughter," the other replied, as if that explained everything.

They were a great bunch, though, and I ended up marrying one of them. They were all very friendly and great fun and there was a sense that we were all in it together.

There's no discrimination against women in engineering. The problem is that so few girls are doing engineering. Women are not attracted to the profession because we, as engineers, are not projecting the right image of what engineering is all about.

People are familiar with medicine and law, but it's not the same with engineering. They think of us as tinkering with engines or being involved in the construction industry. They don't see the design and innovation. I regard engineering as sitting between science and society. We are building things for people to use - computer systems, roads, cars. It's our job to bridge the gap and turn science into something that is useful.

I did computer engineering at Trinity. It was pretty new in Ireland and Britain at that time, so in order to do my master's, I had to go to abroad to a big computer science department. I did a taught master's at the University of Toronto in Canada, which was extremely stimulating.

I then got married and moved to Edinburgh, where I did my PhD. After a few years out, having children, I came back to teach in Trinity in the 1980s. I've been there ever since, teaching computer science.