Working in equity and social change, progress can be slow, the finish line can get obscure, and tasks can begin to feel insignificant during the day-to-day. This year for International Women’s Day (March 8, 2023), the theme is DigitaALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality. This is a perfect tie-in with our vision at STEM Greenhouse to diversify the STEM community through cultivating STEM proficiency and expanding STEM access.
In celebration of International Women’s Day this year, we’re highlighting some of the amazing accomplishments women in STEM made in 2022.
Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI (DALL-E and ChatGPT)
Mira Murati joined OpenAI in June 2018, and in just under 4 years by May 2022 was promoted ot her current role. Before her rise to CTO, she previously held Vice President of Applied AI and Partnerships and Senior Vice President of Research, Product, and Partnerships roles at OpenAI. Previously she worked for Goldman Sachs, Zodiac Aerospace, Tesla, and Leap Motion.
ChatGPT and DALL-E are advanced artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI but serve different purposes. ChatGPT focuses on language processing and generation, while DALL-E focuses on image generation from written prompts.
ChatGPT is a natural language processing model trained to understand and generate human-like responses to textual and verbal input. It can assist with various tasks, such as answering questions, providing information, and engaging in conversation.
DALL-E, on the other hand, is a generative model trained to generate images from textual descriptions. It can create highly detailed and creative images from written prompts, such as a “red shoe in the shape of a pizza slice” or “a green armchair in the shape of an avocado.”
Mariana Matus, PhD and Newsha Ghaeli, Biobot Analytics
Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli are co-founders of Biobot Analytics. Biobot Analytics is a wastewater epidemiology company that analyzes sewage to provide public health analytics. “Inspired by the potential of wastewater epidemiology, Biobot is the first company in the world to commercialize data from sewage.”
In September of 2022, Biobot Analytics launched a High Risk Substance Wastewater Platform intended to address the Opioid Epidemic. The platform provides “unbiased, naturally anonymized data on community use of fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and nicotine.”
Sanskriti Dawle, Chief Executive Officer, Thinkerbell Labs, Polly
Thinkerbell Labs is ‘disrupting the way the visually impaired learn across the globe. [.. Their] flagship product ‘Annie’ is the world’s first Braille literacy device. Annie is a smart, connected device that helps a visually impaired person learn to read, write, and type in Braille on their own while making it easier for other sighted stakeholders to get involved in their education.
Launching in 2023, in partnership with American Publishing House, Thinkerbell Labs designed Polly! an electronic, Wi-Fi-enabled device that will assist users in learning and reinforcing braille concepts.
Rosie Lickorish, Software Engineer – Emerging Technology, IBM
Leading the development of pioneering new approaches for gathering data about the ocean with the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS), Rosie Lickorish is a Software Engineer and Emerging Technology Specialist at IBM Research Europe.
The crewless Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) uses AI-powered autonomous to function and will allow researchers to gather data “from sea level height change, to microplastic pollution, and marine mammal conservation.”
On June 5, 2022 the MAS completed it’s first transatlantic voyage from Plymouth UK to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Anna Believantseva, Chief Operational Officer and Co-Founder, Esper Bionics
With a viral, trending YouTube video and presented at CES-2022, the Esper Hand is only the beginning, with Esper Bionics working on the development of a human leg.
Stella Clarke, Engineer, BMW
Stella Clarke, an Australian engineer for BMW is the project lead for the i Vision Dee prototype car. Using e-ink (found in Kindle’s) it can change into thirty-two different colors and form patterns all controlled through a phone app that “triggers the electrical signals needed.”
According to International Women’s Day data, women’s “underrepresentation in STEM education and careers remain a major barrier to their participation in tech design and governance.”
- Women make up only 22 percent of artificial intelligence workers globally.
- A global analysis of 133 AI systems across industries found that 44.2 percent demonstrate gender bias.
- A survey of women journalists from 125 countries found that 73 percent had suffered online violence in the course of their work.
“Bringing women and other marginalized groups into technology results in more creative solutions and has greater potential for innovations that meet women’s needs and promote gender equality. Their lack of inclusion, by contrast, comes with massive costs: as per UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report, women’s exclusion from the digital world has shaved $1 trillion from the gross domestic product of low- and middle-income countries in the last decade—a loss that will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action.” (UN Women Announcement)
What can YOU do today that will make a difference?
- Make a monthly donation to organizations and programs like STEM Greenhouse that are working to expand access to STEM education
- Repost this article and share with your network
- Advocate to your “governments, activists and the private sector alike to power on in their efforts to make the digital world safer, more inclusive and more equitable.”
#embraceequity #iwd2023 #stemeducation
More Resources:
- Power on: How We Can Supercharge an Equitable Digital Future – https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2023/02/power-on-how-we-can-supercharge-an-equitable-digital-future
- Guide to the 67th Commission on the Status of Women – https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2023/02/your-guide-to-csw67
