As diversity and inclusion initiatives are being dismantled across the pond, what better time to showcase some of the wonderful work of women who are leading across STEM.
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘accelerate action’. As intersectional inequalities of gender, race, religion, sexuality, among others, are perpetuated around the world, we celebrate a diverse group of women actively thriving in historically male spaces and showing the next generation that they are not the exception – women belong here.
‘I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy’
– MARIE CURIE
Olivia Humphreys
Beginning the list with a homegrown talent, Olivia Humphreys has developed a cost-effective and portable scalp-cooling device to help reduce hair loss for people who are going through chemotherapy treatment.
Humphreys is a graduate of University of Limerick (UL), where she studied product design and technology, but it was her own lived experience that inspired the impactful device. When her mom was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, Humphreys saw the real need for a more accessible solution for people.
Last November, she made history as the first Irish person to win the global James Dyson award in the medical devices category, having won the award for Ireland earlier that year.
She is currently working at Luminate Medical in Galway, where she hopes to further develop her product.
Yating Wan
Engineer Dr Yating Wan came to her innovative silicon photonics research because of its combination of deep scientific principles and practical applications.
The research field is growing very quickly because of its potential uses for biosensors, autonomous vehicles, internet communications and, most especially, AI.
Wan was recently announced as the early-career winner at the Sony Women in Technology Awards, held in collaboration with the journal Nature. The judges commended Wan for making “significant contributions to the future of data communications”.
“Seeing a woman achieve so much in science can make us think, ‘oh, if she can do it, probably I can do it too’,” said Wan.
“This sense of connection and inspiration is hopefully what we can all pass to even younger women and girls to show them that there is a place for them inside engineering and that their ideas and contributions are really important.”
Emma Meehan
Olympic weightlifter turned computer scientist Emma Meehan came up with her business idea at the gym. She realised that a lot of people were using incorrect exercise technique and knew technology would be able to help.
Her start-up, Precision Sports Technology, which is based in Galway, is a software platform that uses AI and 3D technology to provide real-time feedback and analysis on exercise techniques. It has won several awards, including KPMG Global Tech Innovator Ireland.
As well as being the founder, Meehan also holds the positions of CEO and CTO.
“Everyone needs movement – movement health is critical for the whole population,” Meehan said.
Yensi Flores Bueso
For Dr Yensi Flores Bueso, growing up in Honduras meant she was inspired to learn about science by the beautiful biodiversity all around her, but she also faced real structural challenges in undertaking a science career. She credits her supportive family, particularly strong women role models, who encouraged her ambitions.
Now she is a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow at the Cancer Research lab at University College Cork (UCC), where she is engaged in cancer research. She has also worked at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington with Nobel prize winner Prof David Baker.
“My research lies at the intersection of molecular biology and structural biology, fields that are currently being transformed by the unprecedented capabilities of AI and data science,” Flores Bueso said.
Sarah Hudson
Prof Sarah Hudson’s research focuses on developing drug delivery design and novel drugs for future medicines.
After a stint as a raft guide and safety kayaker on three continents, Hudson completed a PhD at the UL, then headed off to MIT in Boston to work on drug delivery. She then worked at South East Technological University (SETU) before returning to UL.
Her research aims to improve drug delivery systems to allow drugs to be produced more cheaply and efficiently so that they can be made more widely available.
“I am also interested in making products that consider patient needs. As we all live longer and longer with chronic disorders and diseases, being able to take medicines in a way that gives us a good quality of life becomes really important,” Hudson said.
Indrakshi Dey
Dr Indrakshi Dey is head of the division for programmable autonomous systems in the Walton Institute at SETU, where she studies the links between factors such as pollution and artificial light and the contraction of non-communicable diseases.
She completed her PhD in electrical, electronics and communications engineering at the University of Calgary and went on to become a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Connect Research Ireland Centre for Future Networks and Communications.
“By linking the outcomes of my research to tangible societal benefits – such as improving healthcare outcomes through non-invasive diagnostics or understanding the effects of pollution on human health – I make the work more relatable to the general public,” Dey said.
Laura Hayes
Dr Laura Hayes is a solar physicist who has worked at NASA Goddard and at the European Space Agency. She is now a Royal Society-Research Ireland University Research Fellow at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, where she is researching flare observations from the Solar Orbiter mission.
She has always been keen on problem-solving, which led her to studying theoretical physics for her primary degree, before specialising in the area of solar physics, because it combined her interests in physics principles and real-world applications.
“Why it’s important to study [solar flares] is because they can significantly affect space weather, which has real impacts on Earth,” said Hayes. “For example, solar flares can disrupt GPS systems, communication satellites and power grids.
“Understanding flares is essential for predicting when these disruptions might happen and for protecting our technology.”
Rebecca McManus
Having seen and experienced the challenges of caregiving in her own life, Rebecca McManus founded start-up Amethyst Care to develop an AI assistant that provides care for older people with mobility issues living at home.
With a background in sales and communications, McManus shows that diverse skillsets can be beneficial for careers in tech.
Amethyst Care is based at the Adapt Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology in Trinity College Dublin and aims to provide a solution that can offer continuous monitoring of people’s vital signs, provide emergency alerts in case of falls or accidents, and give real-time updates to family members and healthcare professionals.
“Our goal is to delay the time in which an older person suffering with mobility-related issues needs to go into full-time care,” said McManus.
Catalina Vallejo Giraldo
Dr Catalina Vallejo Giraldo is working on treatments for brain cancers. She has developed a soft gel which contains a cancer-fighting drug that can weaken cancer cells and improve the effectiveness of drug-radiation therapy.
She recently received a European Research Council Starting Grant of €1.5m to further her research.
Vallejo Giraldo studied biomedical engineering in Colombia, before completing a PhD at the Cúram Research Centre for Medical Devices at the University of Galway.
“My inspiration to become a researcher is deeply rooted in my upbringing. Coming from a family of dedicated scientists and academics – my mother, a bacteriologist, and my father, a pharmaceutical chemist – curiosity and discovery were constant companions in my childhood,” Vallejo Giraldo said.
Jenny Radcliffe
Self-described ‘people hacker’, Jenny Radcliffe is a cybersecurity expert.
Over the years, she has used her skills to ‘break into’ companies to help them identify weak links in their security systems and patch them up – but only when asked to.
She has written a book, People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, about how she got into this unlikely profession and some of the important cybersecurity lessons she has learned. She’s also the resident scams and security expert on ITV’s This Morning show.
“The way that you’re caught by these things often is tailored more to you and so it has got more resonance. So, the hacks that people fall for in terms of social engineering are often ones that you’d expect them to fall for,” Radcliffe said.
Sarah Guerin
Based in the Department of Physics at UL, Dr Sarah Guerin leads her own lab to develop materials for eco-friendly sensing and pharma applications.
During her PhD, she discovered that some of the small molecules in our body, if crystallised in the lab, can be used as eco-friendly sensors that have many potential applications in medical devices and are natural energy harvesters.
She also leads a community project to harness kinetic energy from pedestrian movement to generate electricity, which received funding from UL’s Citizens’ Assembly last year.
“Sustainability in how we live our lives and the materials that we use is more important than ever,” Guerin said.
Joanne O’Brien
A lecturer in marine ecology and bioacoustics at Atlantic Technological University (ATU), Dr Joanne O’Brien has always had a passion for the sea, having grown up near it, and is one of those rare lucky people who always knew what she wanted to do when she grew up – marine science.
Bioacoustics is a really useful way to monitor marine life, O’Brien says, because it causes less disturbance and can gather information when visual monitoring would not be possible.
O’Brien is involved in a major EU project to monitor marine life, with marine mammals being her specialty, at various sites across Europe to better understand the health of these environments and species over time.
“We’re putting equipment in the water, listening and then starting to piece together a puzzle as to what’s going on there,” O’Brien said.
Emily O’Gorman
With the aim of harnessing technology to make an incredibly difficult experience a little bit more manageable, Emily O’Gorman has founded Reportd, an anonymous platform for reporting sexual harassment.
Formerly a senior programme manager at start-up hub Dogpatch Labs, O’Gorman says that the chronic underreporting of sexual harassment contributes to the problem because it is underplayed and there is a lack of detailed data about the issue.
O’Gorman has also founded a second start-up called Fendr, which aims to help content creators manage online abuse with automated content moderation.
“The prevalence of sexual harassment is the foundation of sexual violence. If we don’t meaningfully address the bottom of the pyramid, we’ll always be faced with the symptoms of this issue – more devastating acts of sexual violence,” said O’Gorman.
Saritha Unnikrishnan
Before joining academia, Dr Saritha Unnikrishnan worked as a software engineer and systems analyst. She was able to apply this industry knowledge to her research in ATU, where she looks at explainable AI in medical applications, such as for cancer diagnosis and screening.
She is a lecturer in computing and programme chair for the master’s in data science.
“My research is trying to address some of the pressing challenges in healthcare and energy-intensive manufacturing by leveraging the power of AI and at the same time addressing some of the well-known AI challenges such as lack of transparency and generalisability,” Unnikrishnan said.
Sheelagh Brady
Based at the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics in Dublin City University (DCU), Dr Sheelagh Brady’s start-up Kowroo is developing travel safety tech.
A former police officer and UN security analyst, Brady and her co-founder spotted a need for better quality, timely data to keep people safe when travelling for work.
Kowroo offers real-time risk, individualised assessments and personalised safety insights, and has been supported by an Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund.
The company recently participated in the Awaken Hub and Awaken Angels trade mission – which is dedicated to supporting women-led companies – to the US to showcase the platform to potential investors and sectoral experts.
“Companies tend to concentrate on incidents that have the potential for significant impact, whereas employees are far more concerned with incidents that directly impact them, such as sexual assault, theft, medical issues etc,” Brady said.
Carol Aherne
Dr Carol Aherne is an assistant professor at the University College Dublin School of Medicine and a fellow at the Conway Institute.
Her work focuses on the intestinal lining, which is often damaged in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), allowing potentially harmful agents to cross into their body.
The overall goal of Aherne’s research is to restore the normal function of the intestine as a barrier to help people with chronic and often debilitating conditions such as Crohn’s disease and IBD.
As well as her scientific research, Aherne prioritises communicating her findings to diverse communities. Raising awareness of IBD is critical for early diagnosis and better treatment, especially as the disease becomes more prevalent.
“At present, there is a racial disparity in the context of disease severity, with African Americans being demonstrated to being more likely to be admitted to hospital than white Americans. So, by increasing awareness of the existence and prevalence of such a disease through engaging with racially diverse communities, we hope that we could make an impact on long-term outcomes,” Aherne said.
Carmen Palacios-Berraquero
With a master’s degree in physics and a PhD in quantum information, Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero was ideally positioned to take her research and create a University of Cambridge spin-out.
Nu Quantum focuses on quantum computer networking with the aim of unlocking commercial quantum scale-out.
Alongside her work as CEO of Nu Quantum, Palacios-Berraquero is also co-founder and director of UKQuantum, a group set up to advance the industry, and is a member of the Technology Advisory Group at the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre.
“We are building the essential infrastructure of quantum networking, which will be as essential to quantum computing as classical networking is to today’s cloud and high-performance computing environments,” said Palacios-Berraquero.
Lily Keane
Dr Lily Keane described herself as “totally obsessed” with the film Jurassic Park as a child and this inspired her interest in cloning and DNA.
She went on to study genetics and then translational cancer medicine, completing a PhD from Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University. She now works at APM Microbiome Research Centre at UCC.
Her previous research has shown that the immune cells of the brain, called microglia, help certain tumour cells to grow and spread into neighbouring brain areas. She is now focused on strategies for targeting and depleting different types of microglia that are present in brain tumours such as paediatric diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), with the help of a €360,000 research award from the ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation.
“DIPG is the leading cause of brain tumour-related deaths in children. New treatment options are, therefore, desperately needed,” Keane said.
Anna Gajda
The value of biodiversity is at the heart of Dr Anna Gajda’s work. She is head of the Department of Pathology and Veterinary Diagnostics and head of the Laboratory of Bee Diseases at Warsaw University of Life Sciences, where she researches bee pathology.
Bees are at the heart of the global food chain as key pollinators, says Gajda, who highlights the ways that farming and other practices spread diseases among bee populations and how to maintain managed and wild healthy bee populations.
“Start paying attention to the little critters around you, they are fascinating and will give you many ideas to pursue great research. Be patient and humble, as bees are practically a force of nature,” Gajda said.
Clara Nellist
Particle physicist Dr Clara Nellist is an assistant professor at University of Amsterdam where she works on theories of particle physics and uses machine learning techniques to research potential signs of new physics beyond the standard model.
Nellist is also partial to social media – she’s known as Particle Clara on TikTok – and uses her platform to bring her research and work at CERN to a wide audience.
“I think it’s really helpful to humanise the science to show the process, to show that there are a lot more stages to science and also that we need people from lots of different backgrounds, that we need people with creative thinking, who are going to look at a problem in a different way,” said Nellist.
“There is a place for everybody within science.”
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