Innovations

Team Kwe competed in the 2024 Minnesota State Snow Sculpting Competition. The team’s sculpture was called “Wenabozho and Dadibaajimad Journey on the River of Souls,” and was a homage to Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie, who died in 2022. The piece illustrates a traditional Ojibwe story of two figures—Wenabozho and his brother Dadibaajimad—on an otherworldly journey. According to Ojibwe tradition, when someone dies, they travel the Milky Way in a canoe to join relatives who have passed before them.

In the 1940s and 50s Liebes was one of the most well-known textile designers in the United States. In contrast to the neutral palette of many of her modernist contemporaries, she became well known for her unexpected use of materials, vibrant color and pattern. She had a penchant for combining seemingly mismatched colors in a cohesive, visually pleasing manner. Liebes famously called color a “magic elixir” and her textiles were characterized by their rich vibrant hues. Her company, Dorothy Liebes Design, Inc. was opened in 1937, though her husband opposed it.By 1938 she had seventeen men and women working in her studio.

Hallock-Greenewalt named her new color-music Nourathar, an adaptation of the Arabic words for light (nour), and essence of (athar). Unlike earlier inventors of color-music such as the painter A. Wallace Rimington, Hallock-Greenewalt did not produce a strict definition of correspondence between specific colors and particular notes, instead arguing that these relationships were inherently variable and reflected the temperament and ability of the performer. Her earliest attempts at creating this art entailed construction of an automated machine where colored lights were synchronized to records. This produced an unsatisfactory result, leading to development of an instrument that could actually be played live. Her color organ, which she named "Sarabet" after her mother, required her to invent a number of new technologies. She received nine patents from the US Patent office for them. Among these devices was a non-linear variety of rheostat, a patent that was infringed by General Electric and other companies. She sued them for infringement and won in 1934. The Sarabet went through a series of refinements between 1916 and 1934. In 1946 she published a book on her invented art of "light-color playing" called Nourathar: The Fine Art of Light-Color Playing.

considered 1 of the finest contraltos of her time; triumphed over racial prejudice & was an inspiration for America's civil rights movement; 1925 1st African-American to solo at the NY Philharmonic; 1951 required all her concerts be open to integrated audiences; 1955 1st African-American to appear on the main stage at the Metropolitan Opera; 1st American to perform at the Gandhi Memorial; 1961 sang at JFK's inauguration; 1963 sang at the March on Washington DC where Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech

invented a method of repairing Native American pottery with materials that match the original

* Chawla was an Indian-born American astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first woman of Indian origin to fly to space. * She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator aboard STS-87. * Chawla's second flight was on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia, in 2003. * She was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere on 1 February 2003. * Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

* Funk was a member of the Woman in Space Program, later known as the Mercury 13. * This term was coined in 1995 by Hollywood producer James Cross as a comparison to the Mercury Seven astronauts. * The Mercury 13 women were not part of NASA's official astronaut program, and never flew in space as part of a NASA mission. The participants successfully underwent the same physiological screening tests as had the astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury. * In the 1960s some of these women were among those who lobbied the White House and US Congress to have women included in the astronaut program. * NASA continued to exclude women as astronaut candidates for years. * The story of these women was celebrated in numerous books, exhibits, and movies, including the 2018 Netflix-produced documentary Mercury 13.

* As a commercial astronaut, Proctor was launched into Earth's orbit as the first pilot of the Crew Dragon Space Capsule, a part of the Inspiration4 private orbital spaceflight 2021. * She is also the first artist to paint in space.

* Tereshkova is the first woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. * She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission. * Twenty-six years old at the time of her spaceflight, she remains the youngest woman to have flown in space under the international definition of 100 km altitude, and the youngest woman to fly in Earth orbit.

* Williams was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and Expedition 15. * In 2012, she served as a flight engineer on Expedition 32 and then commander of Expedition 33.

* Coleman was selected by NASA in 1992 to join the NASA Astronaut Corps. In 1995, she was a member of the STS-73 crew on the scientific mission USML-2 with experiments including biotechnology, combustion science, and the physics of fluids. * During the flight, she reported to Houston Mission Control that she had spotted an Unidentified flying object (UFO). * STS-93 was Coleman's second space flight in 1999. She was mission specialist in charge of deploying the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its Inertial Upper Stage out of the shuttle's cargo bay.

* After working as a flight instructor and test pilot, Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first to command a Space Shuttle mission. * She was also the first pilot to fly a Space Shuttle orbiter through a complete 360-degree maneuver.

* Epps was chosen for the 20th class of NASA astronauts in 2009, graduating in 2011. * Currently serves as a member of the ISS Operations Branch and has completed analog astronaut missions, including NEEMO 18 and CAVES 19. * She participates in a long duration mission on the ISS, after launch in 4 March 2024, as part of the SpaceX Crew-8 crew.

* Dunbar designed the equipment and manufacturing processes to fabricate the ceramic tiles used in the Space Shuttle thermal protection system. * In 1978, she joined NASA as a flight controller / payload officer, and was a guidance and navigation controller for Skylab during its de-orbiting and re-entry in July 1979. * Dunbar flew on five Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1998, including two dockings with the Mir space station. * She was the principal investigator of the Microgravity Disturbance Experiment using the Fluids Experiment Apparatus.

Before Leavitt discovered the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables, the only techniques available to astronomers for measuring the distance to a star were based on parallax and triangulation. Such techniques can only be used for measuring distances up to several hundred light years. Leavitt's work allowed her to calculate the distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud which was 200,000 light years away. Leavitt's discovery of a way to accurately measure distances on an inter-galactic scale, paved the way for modern astronomy's understanding of the structure and scale of the universe. The accomplishments of Edwin Hubble, the American astronomer who established that the universe is expanding, also were made possible by Leavitt's groundbreaking research.

Lepaute worked with two contemporary French astronomers, Alexis Clairaut and Jerome Lalande, to calculate the date of the return of Halley's Comet. Halley himself had calculated its return within a 2-year window; Lepaute and her colleagues were able to narrow that to a two-month window. She continued to work with Lalande on further astronomical calculations, including the exact date of a 1764 solar eclipse.

At 10:50 pm on the night of October 1, 1847, Mitchell discovered Comet 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) using a Dollond refracting telescope with three inches of aperture and forty-six inch focal length. She had noticed an unknown object flying through the sky in an area where she previously had not noticed any other activity and believed it to be a comet. The comet later became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet." She published a notice of her discovery in Silliman's Journal in January 1848 under her father's name. The following month, she submitted her calculation of the comet's orbit, ensuring her claim as the original discoverer.

Aglaonice or Aganice of Thessaly was a Greek astronomer and thaumaturge of the 2nd or 1st century BC. She is mentioned in the writings of Plutarch and in the scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes as a female astronomer and as the daughter of Hegetor (or Hegemon) of Thessaly. She was regarded as a sorceress for her (self-proclaimed) ability to 'make the moon disappear from the sky', which has been taken – first by Plutarch and subsequently by modern astronomers – to mean that she could predict the time and general area where a lunar eclipse would occur. By studying the moon's cyclical patterns she could predict lunar eclipses.

discovered Horsehead Nebula in 1888 & helped develop a common designation system for the stars; in charge of the Draper Catalogue project; devised a system for classifying stars according to the relative amount of hydrogen observed in their spectra, known as the Pickering-Fleming system; also made it possible to go back and compare recorded plates by organizing thousands of photographs by telescope along with other identifying factors; credited with the discovery of the first white dwarf (40 Eridani B) & published her discovery in 1910; established the first photographic standards of magnitude used to measure the variable brightness of stars: 1891 discovered spectral variations corresponding to changes in the light from the star Beta Lyrae, indicating it was a double star;

2015 founder of SpaceKids Global a nonprofit dedicated to bringing the possibility of space to kids, promoting STEAM & ensuring girls are represented in space; through the Winter Park Live Oak Fund, she contributed to replacing live oak trees destroyed by hurricanes; she & her husband started the Fallen Officers College Education Fund in honor of Winter Park Police Department Lieutenant Stanford Locke, who died in 2019;

* Herschel discovered eight comets in all during the years 1786 – 1797 * These include the comets 35P/Herschel-Rigollet and C/1786 P1 (Herschel) * Extraordinary progress in the field of optics and physics aided in the sighting of comets throughout the 18th century * Younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, with whom she worked throughout her career * In 1799, Caroline was independently recognized for her work, when she spent a week in Greenwich as a guest of the royal family

In 1967 Bell Burnell, as a postgraduate student at Cambridge, detected a "bit of scruff" on her chart-recorder papers that tracked across the sky with the stars. The signal had been visible in data taken in August, but as the papers had to be checked by hand, it took her three months to find it. She established that the signal was pulsing with great regularity, at a rate of about one pulse every one and a third seconds. Temporarily dubbed "Little Green Man 1" (LGM-1) the source was identified after several years as a rapidly rotating neutron star. Controversially, Bell did not receive recognition in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics. She helped build the Interplanetary Scintillation Array over two years and initially noticed the anomaly. Bell later said that she had to be persistent in reporting the anomaly in the face of skepticism from her thesis supervisor Hewish, who initially insisted it was due to interference and man-made. In later years, she opined that "the fact that I was a graduate student and a woman, together, demoted my standing in terms of receiving a Nobel prize." The decision to exclude her continues to be debated to this day.

Nia Imara and Rosanne DiStefano proposed a method for detecting exoplanets in X-ray binary star systems. Imara, Di Stefano, and their other collaborators found evidence, using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, of a potential planet passing in front of a star that is 28 million light-years away in the M51 galaxy. Their findings were published to Nature Astronomy in an October 2021 paper entitled "A possible planet candidate in an external galaxy detected through X-ray transit." If the findings are confirmed, this would represent the first sighting of a planet outside of our Milky Way Galaxy. Imara uses as part of her research 3D printers to create resin sculptures of molecular clouds so she can better study them. DiStefano’s work has encompassed a broad range of astronomical systems: stars interacting within dense stellar environments, the binary evolution of possible progenitors of Type Ia supernovae, X-ray astronomy, and gravitational microlensing. She designed a program that brought undergraduates into the Cambridge Public Schools to teach astronomy. DiStefano also wrote the first comprehensive history of supersymmetry and supergravity, ‘Notes on the Conceptual History of Supersymmetry, Supergravity, and Superstrings’. It constituted a major portion of the book Superworld, edited by Kane and Shifman, World Scientific (2001).

Payne-Gaposchkin proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved she was correct. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics.

In 1976, Faber observed the relationship between the brightness and spectra of galaxies and the orbital speeds and motions of the stars within them. The law that resulted would become known as the Faber–Jackson relation. Three years later, Faber and collaborator John S. Gallagher published a paper collecting all of the evidence for the existence of dark matter that had been published at that point. In 1983, she published original research showing that dark matter was not composed of fast-moving neutrinos ("hot dark matter") and that instead, it was likely composed of slow-moving particles yet to be discovered ("cold dark matter").

Brown is known for her analytic compilation of the first large complete sample of X-ray observations of elliptical galaxies. In 2006, Brown became an Astrophysics Fellow at Goddard, where she was NSSDC's primary interface to such Science Archive Research Centers (SARCs) as the High Energy Astrophysics SARC at Goddard, the Multi-Mission Archive at STScI (MAST) and the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) at Caltech. She also helped to "rationalize" NSSDC's legacy holdings of astrophysics data in light of data supported at the SARCs which are also to be permanently archived at NSSDC.

Bryan wrote several well-regarded textbooks on astronomy and physics for young women; her first work published in 1797 was, "A Compendious System of Astronomy," a textbook for young girls. Her other works included the physics textbook "Lectures on Natural Philosophy," published in 1806 (thirteen lectures on hydrostatics, optics, pneumatics, and acoustics). A smaller volume, "Astronomical and Geographical Class Book for Schools," was published in 1815 and described the mechanics of the air rifle, the hot air balloon, the diving bell, as well as works of Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Benjamin Franklin, including the latter's experiments with lightning. Bryan created a revised edition of an educational board game, "Science in Sport or The Pleasures of Astronomy," in 1804.

Feynman is known for developing an understanding of the origin of auroras; she was able to demonstrate that the occurrence of auroras is a product of the interaction between the Earth's magnetosphere and the magnetic field of the solar wind. She is also known for creating a model that predicts the number of high-energy particles likely to hit a spacecraft over its lifetime, and for uncovering a method for predicting sunspot cycles. In 1971, while working at the NASA Ames Research Center, Feynman discovered that the periodic spouting of solar material known as a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) could be identified by the presence of helium in the solar wind. She helped to develop a model for estimating the environmental hazards of the local space environment. Feynman studied the influence of the sun on patterns of wintertime climate anomalies known as the Arctic oscillation or North Annular Mode (NAM).

The Rubin–Ford effect, an apparent anisotropy in the expansion of the Universe on the scale of 100 million light years, was discovered through studies of spiral galaxies, particularly the Andromeda Galaxy. The idea of peculiar motion on this scale in the universe was a highly controversial proposition, which Rubin et al. first published in journals in 1976. It was dismissed by leading astronomers but ultimately shown to be valid. The effect is now known as large scale streaming. Rubin moved on to study the rotation and outer reaches of galaxies. She investigated the rotation curves of spiral galaxies, again beginning with Andromeda, by looking at their outermost material. She observed flat rotation curves: the outermost components of the galaxy were moving as quickly as those close to the center. This was an early indication that spiral galaxies were surrounded by dark matter haloes. Her work here provided early evidence for the existence of dark matter.

Harding Baker likely began creating the Solar System Quilt in 1876 as evidenced by the "A.D 1876" embroidered in the lower right corner. It apparently took her until 1883 to complete the project. In September of that year, New York Times picked up a quote from an Iowa newspaper that "Mrs. M. Baker, of Lone Tree, has just finished a silk quilt which she has been seven years in making. It has the solar system worked in completely and accurately." The quilt has a wool top embellished with wool-fabric applique, wool braid, and wool and silk embroidery. The design of the quilt resembles the illustrations found in astronomy books of that time period. The quilt shows the Sun at the center and the eight planets of the Solar System (with indicated orbits around the Sun), as well as the asteroid belt. The myriad of stars that exist beyond the Solar System are also shown. The Galilean moons of Jupiter, as well as moons of Earth, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus are included, as are Saturn's rings. The upper left of the quilt shows a large comet, which is likely C/1874 H1, discovered in 1874 by Jérôme Eugène Coggia.

In 1971 while working at NASA, Roman set up the Science Steering Group for the Large Space Telescope, and appointed both NASA engineers and astronomers from all over the country to serve on it. Their express purpose was to design a free-floating space observatory that could meet the community's needs but would be feasible for NASA to implement.

Alexander worked for the United States Geological Survey and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory beginning in 1986, and was the project manager of NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter. The mission discovered 21 new moons of Jupiter and the presence of an atmosphere on Ganymede. The discovery of the atmosphere, more precisely a "surface bound exosphere", caused scientists to rethink their assumptions that Ganymede was an inactive moon. Alexander later served as project manager and scientist of NASA's role in the European-led Rosetta mission to study Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Quick has dedicated her career to investigating the inner workings of planets and moons. Unlike her colleagues studying Earth, Quick can’t just jet off to investigate these faraway locales for her research. Instead, she combines satellite data, an understanding of Earthly geological processes, and the power of mathematics to imagine how other worlds might behave, modeling volcanic processes. Her research has taken her from volcanic plumes on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa to the surface of the crater-laden dwarf planet Ceres and possible ocean worlds outside the bounds of our solar system.

Bieryla is one of the developers of the LightSound device, designed and developed in 2017 as a tool for the Blind and Low Vision (BLV) community to experience a solar eclipse with sound. The device uses a technique called sonification which is the process of converting data (or light intensity in this case) to sound. As the Moon eclipses the Sun during a Solar Eclipse the sunlight begins to dim and the LightSound device will output a change in musical tone. The device can be attached to headphones or to a speaker to project the sound for a group. LightSound is powered by either by a 9V battery, rechargeable Li-ion battery, or by connecting it to a laptop via USB. Data can be collected and saved for later analysis or sonification when the device is connected to a computer.

* Díaz-Merced lost her sight in her early twenties due to complications with degenerative diabetic retinopathy * Trailblazed to find new ways to research stellar radiation using sound * Able to detect patterns in stellar radio data that could potentially be obscured in visual and graphical representation * Created sonification software (xSonify) so she could fully participate in astrophysical endeavors despite her blindness.

* Isler’s research focuses on understanding how Nature does particle acceleration by using blazars, supermassive black holes at the centers of massive galaxies that "spin up" jets of particles * Observations of the electromagnetic spectrum: from radio, optical and all the way through to gamma-rays * Using these observations, she can piece together how and why these black holes are able to create such efficient particle accelerators.

was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of a black hole in the Milky Ways' galactic center; created the UCLA Galactic Center Group to coordinate research and technical developments; January 2020, her team reported the discovery of a new class of bizarre objects — objects that look like gas and behave like stars — at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole; helped pioneer a powerful technology called adaptive optics, which corrects the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere in real time and opened the center of our galaxy as a laboratory for exploring black holes and their fundamental role in the evolution of the universe; published “You Can Be a Woman Astronomer” in 1995; took the first clear photo of the Milky Way; co-authored the book “The Galactic Center: A Window to the Nuclear Environment of Disk Galaxies;” developed a technique known as speckle imaging, which combines many short exposures from a telescope into a single, crisper image;

* Shore led groundbreaking research on how the brain processes bi-sensory information, and how these processes can be harnessed for personalized stimulation to treat tinnitus. * With that she developed together with David Martel the Michigan Tinnitus Device, based on research which found that auditory and somatosensory stimuli delivered to the face and neck reduces tinnitus by engaging damaged nerve cells to strengthen them to normal levels.

wrote several works chronicling her struggles with cultural identity, and the pull between the majority culture in which she was educated, and the Dakota culture into which she was born and raised; 1913 with William F. Hanson composed the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera, based on Sioux and Ute cultural themes; 1926 founded the National Council of American Indians with her husband Raymond dedicated to the cause of uniting the tribes throughout the US in the cause of gaining full citizenship rights through suffrage; created the Indian Welfare Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs; most influential pieces of political writing, "Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians”, was published in 1923 by the Indian Rights Association & led to the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which encouraged tribes to re-establish self-government, including management of their lands; 1901 she published Old Indian Legends, an anthology of retold Dakota stories; Under the name Gertrude Bonnin, she coauthored (with Charles H. Fabens and Matthew K. Sniffen) the book Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians, an Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery (1924), which exposed the mistreatment of Native Americans in Oklahoma;

wrote papers and delivered talks on constitutional law, education, government, and culture focusing in particular on women's issues; believed women should strive to better humanity through volunteerism, but they should continue to raise children in the home as moral educators; believed reform must come through individual betterment rather than social imposition