International Day of Women & Girls in Science

Today is International Day of Women & Girls in Science – so let’s commemorate!

The World needs Science, and Science needs Women.

International Day of Women & Girls in Science takes place annually on February 11. To celebrate the day, at Optiva Media we want to take a look at female STEM specialists’ accomplishments to support their work in the technology field.

Women have led ground-breaking research into technology, programming, robotics and Artificial Intelligence, which make the work at Optiva easier everyday and wouldn’t be possible without the research that has been carried out. Today, we’ve decided to highlight the work of five amazing scientists to smash stereotypes and empower women to pursue a career in science.

Teresa de Pedro

Forerunner of Autonomous Cars

With only 22 years old, her thesis was a pioneer in solving a problem that affected electronic devices of the time through an artificial intelligence program. Teresa de Pedro worked in the Center for Automation and Robotics of the CSIC, which was one of the first groups in Spain to work with mobile robots.

Terah Lyons

Executive Director of Partnership on AI

Her job is to study, formulate and ensure best practices on AI technologies. Working together with well-known players like Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. Terah’s aim has always been to study and discover AI’s potential to change the world.

Laura Fernández

CEO & Co-founder of allwomen.tech

She is an expert in collective and learning innovation, as well as community building. She founded All Women Tech, an academy by women for women, where they teach young women carrying out STEM studies. Their project is aimed to empower young women and provide them with all the know-hows and contents needed.

Cynthia Breazeal

Director of the Personal Robots group at the MIT Media Lab

She is one of the pioneers and leaders of social robotics, having had a hand in the creation of the first social robot, Kismet, made in the late 1990s. She decided to focus on social robotics, which used a completely different framework than what had ever been used in the field. It required study about psychology, social behaviors of humans to better understand how we evolve as people, and how to best build a robot that will enhance our environment.

Cecilia Tham

Principal of Futurity Studio and Advisor at WFP

She creates technological solutions with focus on responsible consumption and climate change. Her latest project is a proposal to apply Multi Agent Systems (MAS) to capture environmental and social values in an autonomous commerce future. Her proposal is aCommerce, which can transform industry and the economy by making transactions frictionless, capturing both financial and non-financial values, to mitigate environmental and social costs of today’s system.

Optiva Media is devoted to achieve full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls, and further achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. That’s why we work on promoting equality and end workplace discrimination.

We believe today is a day to honour women scientists and encourage younger women generations to consider a career in STEM, the more people we work together, they further we’ll get.