Here is a platform to motivate women to participate in Technology.
“Recognize and embrace your uniqueness…Being a Black woman, being a woman in general, on a team of all men, means that you are going to have a unique voice. It’s important to embrace that.” – Erin Teague
Women have made some great contributions to the field of science. Some notable scientists are mentioned below.
GV Krishnaveni is on a mission to examine effects of early stress on adult health. GV Krishnaveni is India’s leading expert on investigating how improper nutrition in the womb leads to non-communicable diseases. She has recently expanded her research to include stress in young adults. Krishnaveni was trying out the Trier social stress test, a test designed in 1993 in Germany’s University of Trier, to induce and understand stress levels in individuals. Apart from some hindrances while travelling, Krishnaveni said that her gender has not affected her work. “At least in this research unit, we have more women researchers than males.” She is unmarried, not because there was too much work, but because “it just didn’t happen,” she said. Krishnaveni believes that her work will provide important leads for next-generation preventive strategies for non-communicable disease in susceptible individuals across the world. She also plans to develop multi-faceted interventions for future use among vulnerable youth to manage stress.
Uma Ramakrishnan is an Indian molecular ecologist at the NCBS, TIFR, Bangalore, where she works on population genetics of South East Asia, the evolutionary history of mammals, conservation and biogeography
Dr Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay did her B Tech, M Tech and Ph. D. in Computer Science from Calcutta University, IIT Kharagpur and ISI respectively.
She is currently a Professor (Higher Administrative Grade) at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. She has worked in various Universities and Institutes worldwide including in USA, Australia, Germany, China, France, Italy, Slovenia and Mexico. She has delivered invited lectures in many more countries. She has authored/co-authored more than 300 research article in international journals, conferences and book chapters, and published six authored and edited books from publishers like Springer, World Scientific and Wiley. She has also edited journals special issues in the area of soft computing, data mining, and bioinformatics. Her research interests include computational biology and bioinformatics, soft and evolutionary computation, pattern recognition and data mining. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, India (NASI), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology (WAST), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Indian National Science Academy (INSA). Sanghamitra is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Dr Shanker Dayal Sharma Gold Medal and also the Institute Silver Medal from IIT, Kharagpur, India, the Young Scientist Awards of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA), the Young Engineer Award of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), the Swarnajayanti fellowship as well as the J. C. Bose Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship from Germany. She has been selected as a Senior Associate of ICTP, Italy. She was awarded the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Engineering Science in 2010, Infosys Prize 2017 and Third World Academy of Science Prize, 2018.
What gives her joy is keeping the curiosity of her students alive. She is a particle physicist and studies neutrinos. Her contribution to the field of science is very important.
Janaki Ammal Edavalath Kakkat (4 November 1897 – 7 February 1984) was an Indian botanist who conducted scientific research in cytogenetics and phytogeography. Her most notable work involves those on sugarcane and the eggplant(Brinjal). She has collected various valuable plants of medicinal and economic value from the rain forests of Kerala. One of the first women scientists to receive the Padma Shri way back in 1977, Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal lived a life only a handful of other women of her time lived. In an age when most Indian women didn’t make it past high school, Janaki Ammal didn’t just obtain a PhD at one of America’s finest public universities, she went on to make seminal contributions to her field. An expert in cytogenetics (the genetic content and expression of genes in the cell), she conducted research on chromosome numbers and ploidy in a variety of garden plants while she was in England which led to new findings on the evolution of species and varieties. Her research played a vital role in understanding the nature of polyploidy in sugarcane and helped in choosing plant varieties for cross-breeding in order to produce the sweetest sugarcane.
Sandhya Koushika is an Indian neuroscientist, currently working at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Her main area of interest is regulation of axonal transport within nerve cells. She is a recipient of the International Early Career Award by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA).
Rama Govindarajan is an Indian scientist specialised in the field of Fluid Dynamics. She was formerly working at the Engineering Mechanics Unit Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and now a professor at the TIFR Hyderabad Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences. Prof. Govindarajan is the recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for the year 2007.
She is a mathematician and works in the field of analytical number theory and arithmetic geometry. She is also a math communicator and blogger.
Sujatha Ramdorai is a professor of mathematics and Canada Research Chair at University of British Columbia, Canada. Previously a professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Ramdorai is an algebraic number theorist known for her work on Iwasawa theory. She is the first Indian to win the prestigious ICTP Ramanujan Prize in 2006 and also a winner of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, the highest honour in scientific fields by Indian Government in 2004. She was a member of the National Knowledge Commission from 2007 to 2009. She is at present a member of the Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Council from 2009 onwards and also a member of the National Innovation Council. She is also on the advisory board of Gonit Sora. She holds an adjunct professorship position at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune.
She is a computer scientist with 50 years of experience in the area of formal languages and automata theory. She is a professor at Madras Christian College.
Asima Chatterjee (23 September 1917 – 22 November 2006) was an Indian organic chemist noted for her work in the fields of organic chemistry and phytomedicine. Her most notable work includes research on vinca alkaloids, the development of anti-epileptic drugs, and development of anti-malarial drugs. She also authored a considerable volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent. She was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Science from an Indian university.
She is a neuroscientist who studies the human brain in connection with music, multilingualism, autism and learning disorders.
Gagandeep Kang (Cherry) is a clinician scientist and Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences at Christian Medical College, Vellore, South India. She is a leading researcher on diarrheal diseases with a major research focus on rotaviral infections in children, and the testing of rotaviral vaccines. She also works on other enteric infections and their consequences when children are infected in early life, sanitation and water safety. She is also the executive director of Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Faridabad and also the current chair of WHO Southeast-Asia regions immunization Technical Advisory Group.
Through the Women Techmakers Scholars Program – formerly the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Program – Google is furthering Dr Anita Borg’s vision of creating gender equality in the field of computer science by encouraging women to excel in computing and technology and become active leaders and role models in the field. The scholarship programme consists of three components – Scholarship, Retreat and Community.
Delphix, the software company based in Palo Alto, California (US), is hosting a coding competition to get more women inside the company. The initiative is to help the company to create a more diverse team.
If you are looking for an opportunity to study in the US, this might be a good one. Level up fellowship is targeted for individuals from low-income backgrounds who have shown a passion for technology and a strong commitment to building a career in tech.
To apply, the candidate has to be referred by one of the following institutions: YerUp, Women Who Code, Npower, Per Scholas and Northern Virginia Family Service (NVFS).
Grace Hopper Celebration is awarding scholarships for its conference, the world’s largest technical conference for women in computing. The event is on Oct 14-16th, 2015 in Houston, Texas.
Women in Technology 