Ahead of International Women’s Day, Student Circuit highlights some of the most influential women to have worked in engineering and technology.
International Women’s Day (March 8th) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.
We all know that there is a massive gender gap within engineering and technology. In fact, 115,000 more girls need to study maths or physics A Levels to bridge this gender gap, according to new research from EngineeringUK.
There is no doubt that more has to be done to address the gender gap in the sector and entice more women to choose a field with prosperous chances in the UK.
Female role models in engineering and technology are essential for encouraging young women to pursue careers in this field.
Below are 10 female role models that can help to inspire the next generation of engineers and technologists:
Dr. Anita Sengupta is an aerospace engineer and former NASA employee. She is best known for her work on the Mars Curiosity rover and for leading the team that developed the supersonic parachute for landing the rover safely on Mars.
Ginni Rometty is an American business executive and former Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM. She has been credited with transforming IBM into a Cloud computing powerhouse and helping to drive its growth into new markets such as artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
Dr. Ayanna Howard is a robotics expert, professor, and entrepreneur. She is the Founder and CEO of Zyrobotics, an educational technology company creating robots to help children with special needs, as well as a dean and professor at the Ohio State University College of Engineering.
Padmasree Warrior is an Indian-American business executive, engineer, and former Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at Cisco Systems. She is credited with leading Cisco’s transformation into a major technology company. She currently serves as the Founder, CEO and President of Fable and is a tireless advocate on behalf of women in technology.
Debbie Sterling is the Founder of GoldieBlox, a toy company designed to help girls get interested in engineering and coding. GoldieBlox was created in 2012 and has since become a hugely successful company, winning awards and appearing on Shark Tank.
Helen Greiner is an American entrepreneur and roboticist who founded iRobot Corporation in 1990. She has since gone on to become one of the most influential women in robotics, having been awarded numerous awards including the IEEE Robotics & Automation Award for her contributions to the field.
Komal is the CEO/Co-Founder of Lab4U, a company democratising STEM education, by empowering corporations to improve STEM learning for their future workforce with hands-on branded lab experiments for high schools. She studied Biochemistry and has a Masters in Biochemistry at Universidad de Chile.
Dr Sue Black OBE is a Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist. Named one of Forbes World #Top50 Women in Tech Professor Sue Black OBE is an inspiring, multi award-winning Professor of Computer Science at Durham University, a radical thinker, problem solver, passionate social entrepreneur, keynote speaker and author. She is also the founding director at Techmums, which provides tech training courses designed specifically for mothers with young children.
Limor Fried is an electrical engineer, computer scientist, hacker, inventor, and entrepreneur who founded Adafruit Industries, an open-source hardware company based in New York City. She graduated with honours from MIT with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science before earning a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.
Danielle Feinberg is a computer graphics supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios who specialises in lighting techniques used to create photorealistic images on screen. Her work has been featured in films such as Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up, Toy Story 3 and Inside Out while earning her three Academy Award nominations for Best Achievement in Visual Effects along the way.
