Helle Rootzén is new director at Informatics

Helle Rootzén (Foto: Marie V. Fridorf)

“We are not awarded any prizes or rewards for hiring a woman as institute director. The only things that count are qualifications.” Those were the words from DTU president Lars Pallesen when he at noon unveiled and presented Helle Rootzén as the new institute director at DTU Informatics.

In 1985 Helle Rootzén graduated as cand.scient in statistics at Copenhagen University. In 1989 Helle Rootzén became a PhD in statistics at DTU, and has since then been employed by DTU Informatics, initially as assistant professor, then associate professor and since 2005 as docent in statistics. Helle Rootzén holds a number of positions of trust and is a member of several scientific societies.

To Helle Rootzén the pivotal point of her research has been environmental and industrial statistics, but research in teaching related subjects is also close to her heart.  Among other things Helle Rootzén has developed the HEROS system – a non-linear, web based teaching system. Furthermore, Helle Rootzén was in 2000 elected ‘teacher of the year’ by the students at DTU.

Both research and teaching has now been set aside by Helle Rootzén in favor of the job as institute director – a job she is proud to hold:

“I am very proud and happy to take over the ball from Kaj Madsen. We have a fantastic institute. We are unique in our scope of the areas of both mathematical modeling and computer science. We are a dynamic institute who are able to continuously draw in new groups of employees. At the same time we have some very skilled employees, with whom I look very much forward to be creating the DTU Informatics of the future with,” says Helle Rootzén.

Helle Rootzén is 49 years old, married and a mother of two children.