Monday, July 2, 2001

The Queen of Geek By DAN CURRY She had the look that any geek would love. There she was, onstage, in a circuitry-inspired corset and split skirt, her father's slide rule strapped to her bare thigh, teaching spectators to compute binary numbers on their fingers. Apparently, she calculated correctly. Ellen Spertus's unique blend of chic and geek helped the assistant professor of computer science at Mills College bring home the crown last week in the Sexiest Geek Alive contest, held in San Jose, Calif. The second annual competition, sponsored by Imark Communications, a company that runs high-tech trade shows, narrowed down the original 15,000 male and female contestants with an online test on geek culture and science. Just nine finalists made it to San Diego, where they were quizzed by technical gurus and asked to sing or dance or perform some other beauty-pageant routine tailored to an audience of nerds. Ms. Spertus showed a video documenting her geek development and ended with the finger-counting demonstration. She explains her allure thusly: "Sexiness is about reproduction," and through her courses at the California women's college, she has spawned hundreds of new female computer geeks. "I'm a geek fertility goddess," she says. She certainly has an unassailable geek pedigree, including three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ("I'm M.I.T. cubed," she says). She also sports an electric car with a license plate bearing an approximation of Ohm's law (the equation: V EQ IR). The 32-year-old says her victory proves that being smart is attractive. Still, she isn't sure if she will tout her accomplishments around Mills. Says Ms. Spertus: "I wasn't planning on putting it on my curriculum vitae -- at least until I get tenure." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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