International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) enters its 11th year this 23rd June 2024, as it continues to spotlight women working in engineering roles and seek to bring more women into the industry.
As part of its 10th edition last year, “Make safety seen” was the slogan, and Associate Editor Sheryl Miles of sister publication Electronic Specifier posed the question to women in engineering roles: what does safety mean to you?
For this year, the chosen theme is “Enhanced by engineering”, to recognise women engineers supporting lives and livelihoods. In this spirit, IoT Insider has chosen to commemorate influential female founders for their significant contributions to technology.
Helen Greiner
Helen Greiner co-founded iRobot in 1994, a robotics company headquartered in Massachusetts where she co-founded the instantly recognisable robot vacuum cleaner, the Roomba. In interviews given over the years, she cited an early childhood experience watching Star Wars and becoming enamoured by an equally recognisable robot; R2-D2.
She also founded CyPhy Works in 2008 and served as Founder and CEO until 2018. At CyPhy, Greiner developed innovative tethered drones designed for persistent aerial observation, with applications in industries including security and infrastructure inspection. Her love and dedication towards robots demonstrated their capacity to transform industries and solve complex problems.
Julie Angus
Julie Angus is the Co-Founder and CEO of Open Ocean Robotics, a company that is driving forward creating an Internet of Things for the ocean. Her inspiration for founding the company came from an experience shared with her husband, Colin Angus, when rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, they were hit by two hurricanes. They succeeded in rowing across anyway, but the idea to create boats capable of collecting information and shaping how we understand our oceans, was formed.
Launched in 2018, today Ocean Open Robotics builds solar-powered, autonomous boats equipped with IoT sensors. These boats collect real-time data on ocean conditions, which is crucial for environmental monitoring, marine research, and commercial applications. Angus’s work with Open Ocean Robotics shows how technology and sustainability efforts can intersect.
Poppy Gustafsson
Poppy Gustafsson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cambridge-based company Darktrace, which leverages AI algorithms to detect cyber threats across the Cloud, networks, IoT and industrial control systems.
In an interview given to The Guardian in 2021, Gustafsson said (in relation to what cyber attacks look like today): “It’s not going to be these futuristic Terminator-style robots out shooting each other, it’s going to be all these little pieces of code fighting in the background of our businesses. In my time here at Darktrace, I’ve seen attackers try [to] use things like Teslas parked in the office car park, [internet-connected] fish tanks in casinos, and fingerprint scanners on the doors of warehouses, all as a sort of new and novel way into businesses.”
Gustafsson was honoured with an OBE for services to cybersecurity in 2019.
Cindy Warner
Cindy Warner is the Founder of 360ofme, a company that focuses on enabling individuals to manage, secure and control personal data, looking to disrupt consumer data management and drive forward data privacy.
Investment secured by 360ofme demonstrates continued interest in privacy, data management and ethical considerations, from a regulatory perspective and consumer mindset.
There’s plenty of other editorial on our sister site, Electronic Specifier! Or you can always join in the conversation by commenting below or visiting our LinkedIn page.