Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating the achievements of women in STEM
Tuesday 8 October is Ada Lovelace Day: a day to celebrate and share the achievements of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths).
It takes place on the second Tuesday in October each year, in memory of Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) who is known as a mathematician, an associate of Charles Babbage and the first computer programmer. Her ideas went on to inspire Alan Turing’s work on the first modern computers in the 1940s.
By celebrating the achievements of women past and present, the organisers hope to inspire the next generation of female scientists.
Here at BU, we are immensely proud of the successes of our own female STEM researchers, who are leading research in the areas of animation, autism, nutrition and environmental change to name just a few.
Dr Rachel Moseley is leading research in gender issues in autism. Historically more men than women tend to be diagnosed with autism, which leads to questions about whether autism disproportionally affects men or whether screening tools for autism are too attuned to the traits shown by men with autism. Dr Moseley’s research focuses particularly on the latter problem: the idea that screening tools are biased towards diagnosing more men than women. To find out more, click here for an article written for the Conversation by Dr Moseley.
In the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, Professor Jane Murphy leads research in the area of nutrition science and dementia care. One research project in this area has led to the development of a toolkit which is helping to transform nutritional care for people with dementia. The toolkit was recently awarded the 2019 CN Award for Nutrition Resource of the Year. You can find out more about the project and download the toolkit here.
In the field of animation, Research Lecturers Vicky Isley and Paul Smith worked with the city of Paisley as part of their bid for City of Culture 2021. As part of the bid, the organising committee wanted to run a number of culture projects to represent the city, its history, culture and links with the natural environment. As computer animators with a history of working on art projects that communicate complex scientific ideas, Vicky and Paul were ideally placed to help. Click here to find out more about their ‘Paisley Pearls’ project and how they developed an art project based on the iconic Paisley pattern and the freshwater pearl mussel, once indigenous to the area.
