Profile of 'Sexiest Geek Alive'

July 25 -- She's MIT cubed, with three degrees from academia's geek central.

Thelicense plate on her electric car reads V EQ IR. (That's Ohm's law: Volts equals current times resistance.)

And she teaches her students at Mills College to count in binary on their fingers.

At the age of 11, she ran electricity through her braces to get theattention of a fellow geek in her fifth-grade classroom. And she grew up and married — what else? — a rocket scientist.

Not Your Average Nerd

Her name is Ellen Spertus, and she's not just your average computer nerd.

Last month, Spertus became the Sexiest Geek Alive.

"I entered [the pageant] because I wanted to be sure there were womenincluded in the contest," she says. "I didn't want female geeks to beinvisible."

They weren't.

Spertus and seven other contestants — two of them women — beat out nearly10,000 other nerds to appear in the competition's final round, held in San Jose, Calif. Produced byImark Communications and online magazine Geek & Guru, the contest, in its second year, is aparody of People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" feature and is designed toprove that geeks can be chic.

Spertus was.

Corset and Circuit Board

She appeared onstage in a black corset with a circuit board design and aslide rule strapped to her thigh — à la Sandra Bullock in MissCongeniality.

"It was my dad's slide rule when he went to MIT," sheexplained. "He gave it to me for graduation."

She showcased her talent in a video montage of her life, highlighted by an endorsement from Richard Stallman, high priest of the free softwaremovement.

"I would describe Ellen Spertus as extremely lovely," he says.

The judges agreed. Spertus walked off with the title, two tickets to a geekCaribbean cruise (it includes lectures by high-tech luminaries and seminars on computer programs like Perl and JavaScript), and the chance to raise public awareness about the role ofwomen in computing.