Women in Science Profiles
Dr. Marjeta Frey Pucko
My everyday challenge is bound to combining theoretical principles and practice in the development of telecommunication systems with customer demands, business reality and the dynamics of development processes in the biggest high-tech development department in Slovenia. After ten years of fundamental and applicable research in telecommunications – or more precisely in the field of telecommunication protocols – and after the end of my studies at the Technical University in Munich I came to the decision to continue my professional career in industry. On the basis of excellent previous co-operation with the company Iskratel I wanted to join the researchers working in the field of usable telecommunication products.
My occupational and scientific orientation was formed by the exceptional research environment at the "Jožef Stefan" Institute where I started to work already during the first year of my undergraduate studies. The decision to work as a scientist and to finish an MSc degree was strongly supported by my two mentors – Assist. Prof. Borka Jerman Blažič, PhD, and Assist. Prof. Monika Kapus Kolar, PhD. With their personal example, scientific achievements and perseverance they conveyed a clear message that being a woman in science is self-evident.
The demands of research work and the appointed times for finishing my PhD set priorities in my personal sphere of life. I have never regretted that I chose science and after science, within the framework of research and development, management in high-tech development processes. As I already stated at the beginning – the everyday irresistible challenge remains.
The article (in Slovene) Creativity and Free Thinking before the Career: A Group Portrait of Nine Women who all holds PhD in ICT, by Jasna Kontler-Salamon, published in Delo, 18.5.2006, presents the exhibition Women with PhDs in Computer and Information Science in Slovenia. Nine women with PhDs in Computer and Information Science, one of them is dr. Marjeta Frey Pucko, reflect on their experience of being a woman in science.