At the forefront
- POSTED ON: 24 Jun, 2023
- TOTAL VIEWS: 204 Views
- POSTED BY: Bhavya Venkatesh
- ARTICLE POINTS: 150 Points
June 23 is International Women in Engineering Day, an occasion to draw inspiration from impactful women at the forefront. Here are three such stalwarts.
Cosmic explorer
Kalpana Chawla
The first woman of Indian origin to fly to space, Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, Haryana. Her name fittingly means ‘idea’ or ‘imagination’. She studied aeronautical engineering at Punjab Engineering College at a time when very few girls in the country were involved in the field. She then moved to the U.S. for higher studies. When she started work at NASA Ames Research Center, she worked in the area of powered-lift computational fluid dynamics. In 1997, she flew to space and spent 15 days orbiting the Earth. A second space mission aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 ended in disaster. Kalpana lost her life along with six other crew members when the spacecraft disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
From milestone to milestone
Christina Koch
NASA astronaut Christina Koch’s career tells a tale of several records. With a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and physics and a Master of Science in electrical engineering, Koch worked on space science instrument development and remote scientific field engineering before becoming an astronaut. Her experience also includes staying and working in Antarctica, Greenland, and several other remote and challenging places. During her time in space, she participated in the first all-female spacewalk and set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman (328 days). Yet another feather in her cap? She is all set to become the first woman to circle the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis II mission. One of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020, Christina Koch is truly a trailblazer.
Pushing boundaries
Marissa Mayer
When Marissa Mayer joined Google in 1999, she was the company’s first female software engineer and its 20th employee overall. During her 13-year stint, she worked on several of Google’s offerings that are distinctive today, including Google Search, Gmail, Chrome, Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View and Google Doodle. She successfully established herself as a key figure in one of the most influential tech companies in the world. Following this, she became CEO and President of Yahoo! Inc, where she spent five years, and then co-founded a start-up technology company called Sunshine. When she was named among Fortune magazine’s annual list of America’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2008, she was 33 years old, making her the youngest woman ever listed.
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