Zineb Ziani Abou-Zite is a computer engineer and forensics expert.  Our paths crossed at an exhibition where she was demonstrating the mobile lab that she’s helped to develop for the French gendarmerie. She’s not a gendarme herself but because she works with them and has an unusual background, as well as a quick and communicative laugh, I thought her portrait belonged on Wombat. She did not start her professional life as a forensics expert or even a computer engineer.

“I adored everything to do with advertising and marketing and that's really what I wanted to do,” she smiles. So she did a literary baccalaureate doing intensive English, Spanish and Italian so that she could communicate in those languages as well as her native French and Arabic.

So how did she move from advertising to forensics? “I was teaching office automation and desktop publishing, things like Word, Excel and so on and happened to meet a researcher who invited me to write a little booklet for school heads about the introduction of ICT in education,” she explains. Her interest in computing was piqued by this project so she did a Masters in New Information and Communication Technologies at the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine in eastern France (where she was the only female student on the course) and then started developing code for the National Education Ministry. “But I realised that I wanted to do more than this, I wanted to do some project management and just at the moment my path crossed that of TracIP.” 

This French company, a specialist in digital investigation and the recovery of sensitive data, is the primary partner of government agencies – police, defence and justice -- in their fight against cybercrime. She joined the company in September 2016 because she would not only be doing forensics expertise, but also managing a new project: the Mobil'DNA. Gendarmerie Major Sylvain Hubac, a doctor in molecular and genetic biology, has patented a system to get a DNA test result within a couple of hours instead of the seven to eight hours required normally. But the gendarmerie wanted to be able to do this test on site where the victims have been found. So Zineb worked hand-in-hand with Major Hubac and his staff to bring technological and ergonomic improvements to the mobile lab that is deployed on a crime scene, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, an accident or a natural disaster and from which they can identify the victims through their DNA.

“I am the only female engineer in the company. The computer world is a rather macho one, it's a world of geeks,” she says with her quick laugh. “So, I always make a point of wearing high heels,” she laughs again. Nevertheless, she says she's always been made to feel welcome and has never come across any male/female challenges in her professional life. And she's always ensured that her salary is the same as her male colleagues'.

Zineb concedes that she is an excellent multi-tasker but to cope with her professional and family commitments (she has three children, the youngest of whom is just 7), she counts not only on being well organised but also on the help of her husband, grandparents who are present during the school holidays, and a house-keeper who deals with cleaning and ironing.

She will need their help because in January she's starting yet another course to gain a university diploma in forensics at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, a northwestern suburb of Paris, which is a long way to go from Nancy in eastern France where she is based, even if it's only for three days a month. “I'm an eternal student,” she giggles.

“I’m really proud of my career, and my parents, who emigrated to France from Morocco in the early 1970s, are all the more proud of having invested in education and contributing to the success of their children: my two sisters are a medical officer and a lawyer and my brother is in the theatre,” she says.

At one point she thought of returning to teaching but her eldest daughter was outraged. “I don't want a mother who's a teacher, I prefer to have one who's an engineer and researcher,” she exclaimed. And so that settled the matter!