Karen Petrie is a British

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

specialising in the area of constraints programming. She was named young IT practitioner of the year by the

British Computer Society Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in infor ...

(BCS) in 2004, for work she carried out whilst on placement at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

. She is currently a professor in the School of Science and Engineering at the

University of Dundee The University of Dundee; . Abbreviated as ''Dund.'' for post-nominals. is a public university, public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a University college#United Kingdom, university college in 1881 with a donation ...

.
School of Science and Engineering, University of Dundee. She is a

women in computing Women in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century, and contributed substantially to the industry. As technology and practices altered, the role of women as programmers has changed, and the recorded history of the fiel ...

activist, who served as chair of

BCSWomen BCSWomen is a Specialist Group of the British Computer Society, The Chartered Institute for IT, that provides networking opportunities for all BCS professional women working in IT around the world, as well as mentoring and encouraging girls and w ...

from 2008 to 2011, and organised many events for women in computing during this period. Petrie is responsible for an argument about sexist behaviour in gender-imbalanced groups called "The

Petrie Multiplier The Petrie multiplier is a thought experiment or mathematical model invented by British computer scientist Karen Petrie, and first described by Ian Gent in 2013. The multiplier "shows that if the percentage of men and women in the room who make qu ...

", which states that with a gender ratio of 1:r, women will receive r² times as many sexist remarks as men. Proving tight upper and lower bounds remains an open question.

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* British women computer scientists Living people 1980 births Alumni of the University of St Andrews Alumni of the University of Huddersfield Academics of the University of Dundee Alumni of the University of Oxford {{Compu-bio-stub