"We had our own electricity.

Even as a child, I was absolutely fascinated by what dad had done, " she recalls.

"I was never a girly girl. I was always working with him on various projects and I loved every minute of it." Two decades later, Maire (28) has just been named British Female Inventor of the Year.

A petite, fair-haired young woman who lectures at Queen's University Belfast, she knows she isn't many people's idea of an inventor. "The image is of a bespectacled, white-haired older man in a white coat, " she jokes.

"When I walk into a room, I can see people looking behind me, waiting for the real scientist to appear. They reckon I'm the assistant. But there's a long history of women inventors . . . Marie Curie wasn't the only one.

Early interest "There were great female inventors like computer scientist Grace Hopper and Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr who developed a secret communications' system."

Maire's award was for a product which protects against internet fraud. "The communication networks are getting faster so security techniques must match these higher speeds."

As she was designing her product, she herself became a victim of cyber crime. "Last Christmas, the police told me they'd found my credit card details on a laptop in England.

"There had been no fraudulent activity on my card but it opened my eyes to internet crime. I'd always been very careful, buying from reputable websites which had the appropriate security certificates. It showed me something new was needed in internet security."

Maire plans to start up her own firm to market her product. After winning the British award, she now goes forward to the European Female Inventor of the Year in Berlin next month.

Her love of science was encouraged by her schoolteacher father and two older brothers who are both electrical engineers. "I remember we had to build a drawbridge in technology class at school.

"I went a bit overboard. The other children's models could hold a bag of sugar. Mine had a motor and switch and could have lifted me!"

Maire lectures and is a research fellow in the department of electrical engineering and computer science at Queen's, where she studied as an undergraduate. "Only 10% of my classmates were female and the number has actually fallen since.

Just 8% of electrical engineering students today are women.

"It's a shame because it's a really rewarding career. You work with cutting-edge technology, there's always something different to do, and there are endless opportunities to travel . . .

I've been to every continent except Antarctica."

Maire regularly visits schools to encourage more girls into electrical engineering. "Women use iPods, computers and mobile phones just as much as men so they should be equally involved in their design and development."

The awards' ceremony in London was diverse, she says: "There were women inventors in their 50s and a woman who was only 19.

"There were all sorts of inventions: from a small solar-powered refrigerator to carry medicines in third world countries, to a computer game for older people in the form of a novel. It was truly inspiring."

HEDY LAMARR. . . NOT JUST A PRETTY FACE HEDY

Lamarr was never carried away with being a Hollywood star.

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid, " she said. Despite what anyone thought, Lamarr was far from dumb.

She was born in Vienna in 1914 to Jewish parents. Her first husband, arms manufacturer Fritz Mandl, sold weapons to the Nazis. Mandl was a domestic tyrant, virtually imprisoning his wife. Lamarr loathed him and his Nazi friends, eventually escaping to London by drugging the French maid he'd hired to watch her.

There, she met movie magnate Louis B Mayer, and so began her film career. Her biggest success came in 'Samson and Delilah' with Victor Mature. But other pursuits beckoned too. Determined for the Nazis to be defeated, she helped develop a frequency hopping system in 1942 to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam.

The idea was far ahead of its time and is the basis for technology used in cordless telephone and WiFi internet connections. Lamarr married six times. She recorded cinema's first fake female orgasm in 1930, over half a century ahead of Meg Ryan. The movie was banned in the US.

As her looks faded and film offers dwindled, Lamarr lived in poverty.

She was twice arrested for shoplifting . . . the last time when she was 77. She always felt her invention wasn't recognised.

Aged 83, she was finally awarded the prestigious Electronic Frontier Foundation Award. She was too ill to attend the ceremony.