Women
Rediet Abebe
💻 Computer Science
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
- 1st female & Black computer scientist appointed to the Harvard Society of Fellows
- Founded MD4SG & Black in AI
- Born & raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; left for educational purposes
- Developes techniques in AI & algorithms with a focus on inequality & distributive justice
- 1st Black female professor in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Dept at UC Berkeley
Born: 1991
Country: Ethiopia
Education: Cornell University (Ph.D., M.S.)University of Cambridge (M.A.)Harvard University (M.S., B.A.)
Lilia Ann Abron
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
⚛️ Environmental Engineering
- 1st Black female to earn a PhD in chemical engineering
- Born prematurely at home in Memphis, TN & taken by cab to hospital because ambulances weren't available to Blacks in Memphis at the time
- Was a girl scout & sang in her church choir
- Founder of PEER in US & Africa; goal is to solve environmental problems in providing sustainable housing to the poor
- Her company provides financial support to science fair participants
Born: 1945
Country: USA
Education: LeMoyne-Owen College BS Chemistry 1966; Washington University, St. Louis MS Environmental Engineering 1968; University of Iowa PhD Chemical Engineering 1972
Alice Merner Agogino
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- worked in the technical industry at Dow Chemical & GE before turning to research & academia; was instrumental in getting more women & minorities into engineering; has written or co-written over 438 articles see scholar.google.com/citations?user=G-xTgkgAAAAJ for a complete list
Born: 1952
Country: USA
Education: University of New Mexico BS Mechanical Engineering 1975; UC Berkeley MS Mechanical Engineering 1978; Stanford University PhD Engineering-Economic Systems & Engineering Management 1984
Norma Arcelia Alcantar
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- born & grew up in Mexico City, Mexico; credits her mother, Acrelia Alcantar, & her grandmother, Balbina Zamora, as the 2 forces who guided her life & career; grandmother was illiterate & Norma taught her how to read & write when she was middle-aged; spent lots of time with her grandmother while her mother was working helping her care for her over 300 birds & tending to her native medicinal plants; grandmother taught her that boiling nopals of prickly pear cactus in muddy water would purify the water; she later discovered it was the cactus mucilage that purified the water; used her water purification method in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to purify water for the victims; also used the technique after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill; holds 23 patents
Born: Unknown
Country: Mexico
Education: BA Chemical Engineering 1993; UC Santa Barbara PhD Chemical Engineering 2000
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Monica Anderson (AI, Swedish-American)
🤖 AI
- TBD
Born: Unknown
Country: Sweden
Education: Linkoping University MS Computer Science 1985
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Monica Anderson (Robotics)
💻 Computer Science
🔍 Robotics
- Works on robotics with a focus on multi-agency systems, multi-robot systems & user interfaces
- Director of Distributed Autonomy Lab at Computer Science Dept of University of Alabama
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Chicago State University BS Computer Science 1990; University of Minnesota PhD Computer Science/Engineering 2006
Kristi S. Anseth
⚛️ Biological Engineering
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- Studies natural & synthetic hydrogels & the use of biomaterials to create an extracellular matrix to supply 3-D cells
- Is trying to create a polymer that will change from soft to hard in response to cues such as ultraviolet light & degrade predictably over time
- Looking at tissue engineering of biomaterials for the replacement of cartilage & heart valves; 1st engineer of either sex selected as Howard Hughes Medical Investigator
- Holds 17 patents
Born: 1968
Country: USA
Education: University of North Dakota-Williston-transferred to Purdue University to complete BS in Chemical Engineering, completed 1992; PhD, University of Colorado, 1994; post-doctoral work at MIT & Purdue
![Photo of Kathleen "Kay" Rita Mauchly Antonelli McNulty](/women_pictures/Antonelli McNulty_Kathleen "Kay" Rita Mauchly.png)
Kathleen "Kay" Rita Mauchly Antonelli McNulty
💻 Computer Science
- 1 of the 6 Women of ENIAC remembered as "Hidden Figures"
- on the night of her birth during the Irish War of Independence her father was arrested as a suspected IRA member & bomber, he spent the next 2 years in Derry Jail & the family emigrated to the US in 1924 about a year after his release settling in Philadelphia
- Irish was her 1st language & she recalled remembering prayers in Irish for the rest of her life
- attended parochial schools & an all-girls high school & college
- after college graduation was hired as a "human computer" to compute ballistics trajectories used for artillery firing tables at the Ballistic Research laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds with a starting salary of $1,620 yearly
- each gun required its own firing table which had approximately 1,800 trajectories & computing 1 trajectory required 30-40hours of calculation with a calculator
- worked with differential analyser which cut the calculation time to 50 minutes for 1 trajectory, when using ENIAC could complete 1 trajectory in approximately 10 seconds but setting up the computer to run a new calculation could take 1-2 days
- in the very beginning ENIAC program was so highly classified the programmers weren't allowed in the room with it & had to use blueprints to work out the programming
- her team tested the feasibility of the H-Bomb
- at ENIACs launch the women who programmed it were instructed to act as hpostesses & greet those around them, they received no recognition for their work until decades later
- 1948 she married John Mauchly (died 1980) the co-inventor of ENIAC, quit her job at Aberdeen & continued to work with hi on software for other hardware he developed
- her parents, especially her mother, objected to the marriage
- Married 2nd husband Severo Antonelli 1985 & he died 1996
Born: 1921
Country: Ireland
Education: chestnut Hill college BA Mathematics 1942
Virginia Apgar
⚛️ Biomedical Engineering
🔍 Anesthesiology
- 1953, invented Apgar Score-a quick way to assess the health of a newborn infant to combat infant mortality
- With Allen Whipple, started Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons Anesthesia Division
- From 1959 to 1974 worked for March of Dimes as Vice President for medical research
- Promoted universal vaccination for rubella & effective use of RH testing
- 1st to hold a faculty position in the field of teratology (study of birth defects)
- 1972, with Joan Beck, wrote, "Is My Baby All Right?"
- Played the violin & travelled with it, often joining in with amateur chamber quartets wherever she went
Born: 1909
Country: USA
Education: Mount Holyoke College, AB in Zoology, 1929; Columbia University of Physicians & Surgeons, MD 1933; John Hopkins School of Public Health, MPH 1959
Treena Livingston Arinzeh
⚛️ Biomedical Engineering
- Known for research in adult stem cell therapy
- Through Project Reads Program opens up her lab at Columbia University to economically disadvantaged High School students for summer internships
- Founded the 1st Tissue Engineering & Applied Biomaterials Lab at New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2001
- Discovered that mixing stem cells with scaffolding allows regeneration of bone growth & the repair of tissue damage
- Discovered one person's stem cells could be implanted in another persons without causing an adverse immune response
Born: 1970
Country: USA
Education: Rutgers University, BS in Mechanical Engineering, 1992; Johns Hopkins University, MSE in Biological Engineering, 1994; University of Pennsylvania, PhD in Bioengineering, 1999
Frances Hamilton Arnold
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- 2018, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering the use of directed evolution to engineer enzymes
- Co-chair of President Biden's Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST) since 2021
- As a high school student, hitchhiked from her home in Pittsburgh to DC to protest the Vietnam War; lived on her own working as a cocktail waitress at a local jazz bar & as a cab driver
- Was very independent, skipped a lot of school & received low grades while scoring almost perfectly on standardized tests
- Applied to Princeton as a mechanical engineer because it was the easiest option to get into school
- After her 2nd year at Princeton, took a year off, went to Italy & worked in a factory that made nuclear reactor parts
- Founded GEVO to make fuels & chemicals from renewable sources; founded Provivi with 2 of her former students to research alternatives to pesticides for crop protection
- Is a breast cancer survivor
- Holds 56 patents
Born: 1956
Country: USA
Education: Princeton University, BS in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, 1979; University of California, Berkeley, MS, PhD in Chemical Engineering, 1985
Ellen Marie Arruda
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- Professor at University of Michigan since 1992
- Hobbies include running, cooking & knitting
- was taught crocheting by her mother & knitting by her mother-in-law
- holds 15 patents
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Pennsylvania State University BS Engineering Science 1985 & MS Engineering Mechanics 1988; MIT PhD Mechanical Engineering 1992
Chieko Asakawa
💻 Computer Science
🔍 Accessibility
- Began losing her sight at age 11 after injuring her optic nerve; completely blind by 14
- Developed Netscape browser plug-in, the IBM Home Reader; it is the most widely used web-to-speech system available
- Has developed a word processor for Braille documents, a digital library for Braille documents, an app for improving accessibility of streaming services, & a system that enables sighted web designers to experience the web as blind people do
- Is working on a suitcase robot to help blind people navigate through complicated terrain; Holds 21 patents
Born: 1958
Country: Japan
Education: Otemon Gakuin University, BA English Literature, 1982; University of Tokyo, PhD in Engineering, 2004
Tara Astigarraga
⚛️ Engineering
- Member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
- is an IBM Master Inventor
- has been employed at IBM since 2001
- before an internship at IBM her senior year of college, wanted to be a bilingual teacher or social worker
- received her 1st patent in 2008
- likes solving real-world problem
- is very active in recruiting Native Americans to STEM & engineering careers
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: University of Arizona BA Spanish Linguistics & Communications 2001, MS Computer Information Systems
Donna Auguste
💻 Computer Science
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
- At Apple developed Newton personal digital assistant (PDA)
- She & her 4 sisters were raised by her single mother
- As a child she liked to take things (doorbells & appliances) apart to see how they worked
- 1st female African-American to attend the PhD program at Carnegie-Mellon University
- After working at IntelliCorp on AI, she took 2 months off to bicycle through the countryside of Japan
- 1996, co-founded Freshwater Software Inc & took it from a small startup to a nationally recognized multimillion dollar software provider; 2001 sold the company to Mercury Interactive Corporation of California for $147 million
- Retired in 2001 & founded Leave a Little Room Foundation, LLC; it provides housing, electricity & vaccinations to poor & underprivileged communities around the world
- Holds 14 patents
Born: 1958
Country: USA
Education: BS in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley; PhD in Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
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MeMe (also MiMi) Aung
⚛️ Electrical Engineering
- lead engineer on Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, the 1st extraterrestrial aircraft; creates sensor tech for space flight missions; Born in USA but family returned to Burma whebn she was 2; she returned to USA at 16 to continue education
Born: 1968
Country: USA
Education: University of Illinois Urbana-champaign BSEE & MS 1990
Wanda Lena Austin
💼 Business Executive
⚛️ Engineering Aerospace
- none
Born: 1954
Country: USA
Education: BA in Mathematics, Franklin & Marshall College, 1975; MA in Systems Engineering & Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, 1975; PhD University of Southern California, 1988
Hertha Ayrton
⚛️ Electrical Engineering
- was born Phoebe Sarah Marks & was known as Sarah growing up
- there are 2 stories about how she became known as Hertha; the 1st says she became an agnostic at age 16 & began calling herself Hertha after the heroine of a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne that criticized organized religion; the 2nd story says she was nicknamed Hertha by her friend Ottilie Hancock after the heroine of a novel by Swedish feminist Frederika Bremer
- father died in 1861 when her mother was pregnant with their 8th child, she was the 3rd child & helped by assuming responsibility for her younger siblings
- at age 9 was invited to live with her aunt Marion Hartog (an author) & her family in northwestern London & attend a school run by Marion & her husband
- by 16 was working as a governess
- George Eliot supported her application to Girton College in Cambridge where she studied mathematics, constructed a sphygmomanmeter (blood pressure meter), led the choral society, founded the Girton fire brigade, & with charlotte Scott formed a mathematical club
- 1880 passed her Mathematics Tripos but was not awarded a degree because Cambridge didn't give degrees to women; she then passed an external exam at the University of London which gave her a BS in 1881
- earned money teaching & doing embroidery, ran a singing club for working girls, & cared for her invalid sister
- 1885 married Professor William Edward Ayrton a pioneer in electrical engineering & physics education, helped him with his experiments in physics & electricity
- was an active supporter of the women's suffrage movement
- was a close friend of Marie Curie & gave her daughter Irene math lessons
- her daughter Barbara Bodichon Ayrton (named after her patroness Barbara Bodichon) became a member of Parliament for the Labour Party & her grandson was the artist Michael Ayrton
- the character Mirah Cohen in George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda published in 1876 is based on Ayrton
- 1902 was nominated as a fellow of the Royal society but was denied because married women had no standing in Britain
Born: 1854
Country: United Kingdom
Education: Girton College Cambridge; University of London BS 1881
Ruzena Bajcsy
🔍 Robotics
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
- Born in Bratislava (now Slovakia); she & her sister were the only survivors of WWII in her immediate family ; they were supported as war orphans by the Red Cross; later raised in orphanages & foster homes
- Known for her contributions to robotics & AI
- 1st female recipient of a PhD in Electrical Engineering in Slovakia
- Founded General Robotics & Active Sensory Perception Lab (GRASP)
- Introduced the idea of active perception in robotics
- Holds 3 patents
Born: 1933
Country: Czechoslovakia
Education: 1957 & 1968, MS & PhD in Electrical Engineering, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava; 1972, PhD in Computer Science, Stanford University
Erica Joy Baker
💻 Computer Science
- CTO for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; 2015, started an internal spreadsheet where Google employees reported their salary data to better understand pay disparity within the company; 2016, co-founder Project Include;
Born: 1980
Country: Germany
Education: University of Miami, 1 year, no degree; University of Alaska, 2001, Associates of Applied Science in Information Technology; Hackbright Academy, degree in Computer Software Engineering
Zhenan Bao
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- Born & raised in China
- emigrated to US 1990 to further her education
- lists herself as an American citizen but her date of citizenship is unknown
- has been on staff at Stanford University since 2004
- was Chairman of Stanford's Chemical engineering department from 2018-2022
- worked at Lucent Technology Bell Labs for 9 years before working at Stanford
- was accepted to the PhD program at the University of Chicago before she completed her BA
- her acceptance was based on 2 awards she won as an undergraduate student
- both of her parents were professors at Nanjing University, her mother in Chemistry & father in Physics
Born: 1970
Country: China
Education: Nanjing University Chemistry major, no degree; University of Chicago 1993 MS & 1995 PhD both in Chemistry
Gilda A. Barabino
⚛️ Biomedical Engineering
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- none
Born: 1956
Country: USA
Education: 1978, BS in Chemistry, Xavier University of Louisiana; 1986, PhD in Chemical Engineering. Rice University
Rodica A. Baranescu
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- Engineering professor at University of Illinois at Chicago 2005-2016
- taught at Politehnica University in Bucharest 1964-1978
- emigrated to US 1980 to work for Navistat (now International Truck & engine corporation & was eventually promoted to Chief Engineer for Engine Performance Analysis & managed the Fuels & Lubricants & Engine Group
- 2011 helped establish the Rodica Baranescu Award for Technical & Leadership Excellence awarded by SAE
- holds 2 patents in Romania
Born: 1940
Country: Romania
Education: French Institute of Petroleum BS Mechanical Engineering; Politehnica University of Bucharest MS Mechanical Engineering 1961 & PhD Mechanical Engineering & Thermo Sciences
Betty Jean Jennings Bartik
💻 Computer Science
- 1 of the 6 Women who worked on ENIAC. The day before it debuted, the world’s first general-purpose computer failed to work & it was up to seven women to stay late and make the beast, dubbed ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) operational
- retired from the computer industry in 1986 & spent the next 25 years as a real estate agent
- content-management framework Drupal's default theme, Bartik, is named in her honor
- was the 6th of 7 children, father was a teacher & farmer
- as a child would ride on horseback to her grandmother's daily, grandmother bought a newspaper daily for her to read & was a role model for her
- began her education in a 1-room schoolhouse & gained recognition for her softball pitching skills; once pitched a no-hit, no-run game; was paid $2 per game to pitch during summers
- moved in with her sister for the freshman year of high school because there was no high school in her town, after that year moved back home (30 miles) & was allowed to drive the 2 miles to the bus to get to school when she was 14
- graduated high school at 16 & was salutatorian
- originally intended to major in journalism but switched major to math because she hated her advisor
- the ENIAC Women were known as the "Sensational six"
- had no manual for how to run the ENIAC & weren't allowed to be in the same room with it until their security checks were completed; learned how to program it by studying construction diagrams & interviewing the engineers who built it then used the information gathered to teach themselves the skills they needed to run it
- The congratulations for the success of ENIAC were given to the engineers, John Mauchly & John Eckert; the women didn't receive recognition for their roles until 1985
- several documentaries were later made to give credit for their work
- her autobiography "Pioneer Programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik & the Computer That Changed the World" was published posthumously in 2013
- a computing museum in Maryville, Missouri is dedicated to the history of computing & her career
- grew up in a 4-room house & worked the fields of the family farm
- was the only math major in her college graduating class; 2 courses were arranged as tutorials & taught by retired teachers so she could graduate
- was a devoted bridge palyer
Born: 1924
Country: USA
Education: Northwest Missouri State University BS Mathematics 1945; University of Pennsylvania MS English 1967
Regina Barzilay
💻 Computer Science
- has been teaching & doing research at MIT since 2003
- emigrated to Israel with her parents when she was 20
- diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 which prompted her to focus her research on oncology
Born: 1970
Country: Moldova
Education: Ben Gurion University of the Negev BS 1993 & MS 1997; Columbia University PhD Computer Science 2002; Postdoc at Cornell University 2003
Janet Rita Emerson Bashen
💻 Software Inventor
- family moved to Huntsville, Alabama from Ohio when she was very young
- attended segregated schools until the 5th grade in Huntsville
- her mother was the 1st African-american er nurse in Huntsville
- after graduation from the University of Houston worked for an insurance company handling EEO-related claims
- 1994 received a $5,000 loan from her mother & started Bashen Vorp to investigate discrimination claims filed by employees from her home
- testified before the US House of Representatives in 2000 that civil rights & employee misconduct investigations should be exempt from the Fair Credit Reporting Act
Born: 1957
Country: USA
Education: University of Houston BS Legal Studies & government; Harvard University Women & Power: Leadership in a New World certificate; USC Doctor of Social Work 2023; Tulane University Law School Master of Jurisprudence, Labor & Employment Law; University of Houston Law Center 40 hours of Mediation training; Alabama A&M (did not graduate); Postgraduate work Rice University Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Administration
Eleanor K. Baum
⚛️ Electrical Engineering
📚 Educator
- was an only child
- parents left Europe during the Holocaust, traveling to Japan & then Canada before settling in NY
- is named after Eleanor Roosevelt
- parents wanted her to be a teacher & would hide articles with themes of "the joys of being a schoolteacher" under her pillow
- was the only girl in her advanced physics and advanced mathematics classes
- one of the engineering schools she applied to would not admit her because it did not have a sufficient ladies' room
- sat on the National Science Foundation's Engineering Advisory Board
- was involved with the Engineering Manpower Commission
- when she became dean at Cooper Union, 5% of the student body was female & she increased this to 40% during her tenure there
- 1995 elected 1st female President of American Society for Engineering Education
- after graduating, worked in the aerospace industry, first at Sperry Rand Corporation and later at General Instrument Corporation
Born: 1940
Country: Vilnius
Education: City College of NY Bs Engineering 1958; Polytechnic Institute of NY (now NYU School of Engineering) MS & PhD 1964 both in Electrical Engineering
Sandra K. Begay-Campbell
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- Provides electricity through solar panels & other alternative energy sources to remote tribal members on Navajo Reservations
- Works at Sandia National Labs, Albuquerque, NM &Chose to attend Stanford for MS because of its noted American Indian community
- Mentors American Indian engineering students, especially in the energy sector
- Chairs the Rainforest Innovations program at UNM
Born: 1962
Country: USA
Education: 1987, BS Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico; 1991, MS Structural Engineering, Stanford University
Evelyn Berezin
💻 Computer Science
⚛️ Physics
- Designed the 1st computer-driven word processor & worked on computer-controlled systems for airline reservations
- Started college at age 16
- Designed a system for the US Army for range calculations
- Developed the 1st computerized banking system
- 1968, had a job offer from NYSE retracted because she was a female 1969, founded Redactron Corporation & made the 1st "Data Secretary"-a word processor the size of a small refrigerator, without a screen, keyboard, or printer, was an IBM Selectric typewriter
- Endowed a scholarship, a chair/professorship/research & discretionary fund for the Linguistics Dept at Stony Brook University
- Held 13 patents (only 8 located)
Born: 1925
Country: USA
Education: 1946, BS, Physics Hunter College
Carlotta A. Johnson Berry
⚛️ Electrical Engineering
💻 Computer Engineering
🔍 Robotics
- none
Born: 1970
Country: USA
Education: 1992, BS, Mathematics, Spelman College; 1993, BS, Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; 1996, MS, Control Systems, Waye State University; 2003, PhD, Electrical Engineering with a focus on human-robotic interface, Vanderbilt University
Sangeeta N. Bhatia
⚛️ Biological Engineering
🔍 Nanotechnology
- Applies ideas from computer technology & engineering to the design of miniaturized biomedical tools for the study & treatment of diseases, especially liver disease, hepatitis, malaria, & cancer
- Co-authored the 1st undergraduate textbook on tissue engineering with Bernhard Palsson in 2004
- Helped found Diversity Committee of the Biomedical Engineering Society
- At MIT, helped start Keys to Empowering Youth, a program that brings middle school girls to visit high-tech labs to encourage them to pursue careers in science & technology
- She & her co-workers have used techniques from 3-D printing to create a lattice of sugar as a framework for a synthetic vascular system with the goal of supporting larger tissue structures such as an artificial liver
- Holds 37 patents
Born: 1968
Country: USA
Education: BS,Brown University; 1993, MS Mechanical Engineering, MIT; 1997, PhD Biomedical Engineering& Medical Physics, 1999, MD, Harvard Medical School
Irene Rena Bizios
⚛️ Bioengineering
- 1stfemale chemical engineer to receive a PhD in the biomedical engineering program at MIT
- was on staff at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) 1991-2006, leaving to work at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA)
- during her 1st 3 years at UTSA also lectured at Clemson University & the University of Kentucky
- holds 5 patents
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: University of Massachusetts-Amherst BSc Chemical Engineering 1968; California Institute of Technology MSc Chemical Engineering; MIT PhD Biomedical Engineering 1979
Daniela Eugenia Blanco Jimenez
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
🤖 AI
- she, her co-founders of Sunthetics (Myriam Sbeiti & Miguel A. Modestino) & the company are featured in the 2021 documentary, Own The Room, streaming on Disney+
- was raised by a single-mother in Venezuela
- initially wanted to be a neurosurgeon but changed to chemical engineering after discovering she could not handle the sight of blood while observing a surgical procedure
- moved to the USA in 2017 to attend NYU
- her company is located in Texas
- holds 4 patents
Born: Unknown
Country: Venezuela
Education: Universidad Simon Bolivar BS Chemical Engineering 2016; NYU MS 2018 & PhD 2020 both in Chemical Engineering
Arlene Blum
🔬 Biophysical Chemistry
🤖 Mountaineer
- first climb was in Washington, where she failed to reach the summit of Mount Adams
- was rejected from an Afghanistan expedition in 1969, with its leader writing to her, "One woman and nine men would seem to me to be unpleasant high on the open ice, not only in excretory situations but in the easy masculine companionship which is so vital a part of the joy of an expedition."
- 1970, she requested to join a high altitude expedition, but was told that she was welcome to come as far as the base camp to "help with the cooking."
- after graduation from graduate school took a year off to climb peaks around the world
- wrote a book about her experience on Annapurna, called Annapurna: A Woman's Place.
- crossed the Alps from Yugoslavia to France, bearing her baby Annalise on her back in a backpack
- her memoir is titled Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life
- she & her team at Green Science Policy Institute have led several successful national and international campaigns against the use of toxic chemicals, particularly halogenated flame retardants
- founder of the annual Berkeley Himalayan Fair and the Burma Village Assistance Project
- completed the Great Himalayan Traverse across the mountain regions of Bhutan, Nepal, and India
- has been a research associate in chemistry at UC Berkeley since 2017
Born: 1945
Country: USA
Education: Reed College BS Chemistry 1966; MIT 1966-67; UC Berkeley PhD Biophysical chemistry 1971
Jenny Mary Body
⚛️ Aerospace Engineering
- Only female in her high school physics class in Bristol
Born: Unknown
Country: UK
Education: Imperial College of London
Mary Cunningham Boyce
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- Provost of Columbia University 2021-23
- Dean of Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science 2013-21
- was a faculty member at MIT for 25 years
- 1st female recipient of the Timoshenko Medal
- before graduate school worked as an aerospace engineer at Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace
- since 2018 has been Independent director of Altair engineering
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Virginia Tech BS Engineering Science & Mechanics 1981; MIT SM 1983 & PhD 1987 both in Mechanical Engineering
Elizabeth Bragg Cumming
⚛️ Civil Engineering
- born to a wealthy family in San Francisco, California
- was good in math & allowed to attend the high school that prepared students for the University of California Berkeley
- taught until her marriage in 1888
- retired to be a stay at home mother & raise her 3 sons
- never worked as an engineer
Born: 1858
Country: USA
Education: UC Berkeley Bachelors Degree in Civil Engineering 1876
Khalia M. Braswell
💻 Computer Science
Country: USA
Education: BA, Computer Science, College of Engineering at North Carolina State University; Masters of Information Technology, concentration in Human Computer Interaction, UNC-Charlotte, 2016; PhD, Computer Science Education, Temple University
Cynthia Breazeal
🔍 Robotics
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
- 2012, co-founded Jibo, a company that develops personal assistant robots
- Developed robot Kismet as a doctoral thesis; also developed the upper torso humanoid robot Cog & insect-like robot Hannibal
- In the early 2000s she worked on robots Leonard, Aida, Autom, & Huggable
- Developed Next robot that is MDS (mobile, dexterous, & social)
- Holds 8 patents
Born: 1967
Country: USA
Education: 1989, BS Electrical Engineering/Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara; 1993, SM, 2000 PhD, Electrical Engineering/Computer Science, MIT
Yvonne Madelaine Brill
⚛️ Aerospace Engineering
🔬 Rocket Science
- Worked on the 1st weather satellite Tiros' propulsion system & on Nova-a series of rockets that were part of Apollo Moon Missions
- 1st African-American female to earn an MA in Engineering Management from Vanderbilt University (1972)
- Invented Electrothermal Hydrazine Thruster (EHT/Resistojet) a fuel efficient rocket thruster that keeps today's satellites in orbit & holds the patent for it
- Was inspired to attend school by Amelia Earhart
- 1st in her family to attend college
- Numerous corporation (including RCA, GE, Lockheed Martin, & Orbital Sciences) have used EHT in their communication satellites
- The NY Times obituary on her was controversial & deemed sexist because it originally began "She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, & took 8 years off from work to raise 3 children"
Born: 1924
Country: Canada
Education: 1945, BA Chemistry & Mathematics, University of Manitoba; 1951, MA Chemistry, University of Southern California
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