STEM Role models

Anne-Marie Osawemwenze Ore-Ofe Imafidon MBE is a British computing, mathematics and language child prodigy. She is one of the youngest to pass two GCSEs in two different subjects while in primary school. Imafidon founded and became CEO of Stemettes in 2013, a social enterprise promoting women in STEM careers.

Jacqueline de Rojas CBE is President of techUK and Chair of the Board of Digital Leaders. She serves as Non-Executive Director on the board of Rightmove, Costain Group, AO World and supports the Government of the United Kingdom in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. She is also an advocate of Girl Guides UK.

Sonya won the Rising Star Award UK 2017 and has since founded an all inclusive women’s network in London called Like Minded Females, where women can discuss key societal topics, inspire one another and expand their network within all industries. She is an award winning entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, podcast host & diversity coach.

Sharmadean Reid MBE is a British Jamaican entrepreneur. She is the founder of WAH Nails and Beautystack. She is an advocate for women’s empowerment.

Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903

Ada Lovelace who was born in 1815, is regarded as the first ever computer programme after writing an algorithm (which is just a set of calculations)

But have you ever heard of ….. Hedi Lamarr She was a famous actress in the early 1900’s but she was also a scientist co-inventing an early technique for spread spectrum communications—key to many wireless communications of our present day.

Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina to go to space She joined NASA as a research engineer and retired 30 years later as the second female and first Hispanic Director of the Johnson Space Center. She logged nearly 1,000 hours in orbit over the course of four space missions.

Christina Koch recently returned to Earth after record-breaking space mission Koch lands in Kazakhstan after 328 days in space, the longest continuous spaceflight by a female astronaut An electrical engineer from North Carolina, she is an expert in space science instrument development and in engineering in remote scientific locations including Antarctica and Alaska. Her research during the mission included growing protein crystals for potential use as treatments for Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.

Professor Susan Black OBE FBCS FRSA is a British computer scientist, academic and social entrepreneur. She has been instrumental in saving Bletchley Park, the site of World War II codebreaking, with her Saving Bletchley Park campaign. She is currently researching diversity and equality in AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Frances Arnold won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2018

Dr Ozak Esu is an Engineer and she won Young Woman Engineer of the Year 2017

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson is an African-American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. manned spaceflights. Made famous from the film “Hidden figures”

Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian born female in space in 1997

Joanne S. Johnson is a geologist and Antarctic scientist, who has worked for British Antarctic Survey since 2002. She works in the palaeoenvironments, ice sheets and climate change team and is best known for her work on glacial retreat. The Johnson Mesa in James Ross Island, Antarctica is named in her honour. 

Jess Wade – Physicist at Imperial College She’s made it her mission in life to add women in science to Wikipedia – highlights a problem that there is a lack of evidence that they even exist! https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-11/physicist-writes-900-wikipedia-entries-to-boost-diversity-in-science/

Molecular biologist Jennifer Lopez works for NASA and she makes sense of all the data collected from satellites, telescopes, robots, spacecraft and laboratories. She is a “datanaut”

Danica Mae McKellar is an American actress, mathematician and writer