James Tapper
Sun, 5 November 2023
In this article:
Frances Arnold
Nobel prize winning US scientist and engineer
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
As a Nobel laureate, Prof Frances Arnold is not short of accolades. Yet being the only woman to so far win the Millennium Technology Prize – the Nobel equivalent for engineers – is one of the least appealing.
Nominations for the €1m 2024 prize closed last week, and the organisers have revealed that women formed just 16.3% of nominees, the highest of any year since the biennial award’s launch in 2004, apart from the 28.1% put forward in 2022.
“We’d love to see more diversity in the winners of these prizes because we know that diverse people contribute to technology,” Arnold, an American chemical engineer, told the Observer.
The award organiser, Technology Academy Finland (TAF), has pushed the scientific and engineering community to think about women when they consider innovations towards creating a better life.
Tim Berners-Lee was the inaugural winner in 2004 for inventing the world wide web, while others have been recognised for DNA fingerprinting, fibre optic networks and stem cell research. But Arnold said it would take time for more women to join her.
“It’s important to remember that these prizes are often recognising work that was started 20, maybe even 30 years ago, when women were not as numerous in the technology community as they are today,” she said. “So my prediction is that there will be more nominations for women because marvellous women are joining the technology community.
“Also, it’s possible women are not recognised as much because they work in teams. And these kinds of prize often try to pinpoint a contribution of one or a few – very few – individuals.”
Related: Why the Women’s Engineering Society still has its work cut out after 100 years
Arnold said she was “thrilled” to have received the prize in 2016 for her work on directed evolution of enzymes. “I’m an engineer by training, and it’s a huge prize for engineers – you can think of it as the Nobel prize for engineers. Two years later, I won the Nobel prize [in chemistry] – I don’t know how those are connected, but it was for basically the same sets of ideas.”
Winning took “a lot of hard work”, she said. “And taking the blows and standing back up again. You have to be willing to take the criticism and do the hard work. I never shied away from that. I certainly wasn’t going to let someone else have all the fun. I love research, I love invention. Why would I let the men have all the fun?”
In addition to her research, Arnold also co-chairs President Joe Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and teaches at the California Institute of Technology.
“Half of our undergraduates are women. So the pipeline is there. Whether they stay to compete in academic research is another question.”
Women often choose to “look more widely” than men and often go into leadership positions in industry, Arnold said, where “maybe their potential for making these big discoveries is not as great”.
Her own big discovery was that she could breed enzymes like others breed sheep or yeast. In directed evolution, unlike natural selection, enzymes are encouraged to mutate then selected by engineers for specific properties that are useful, such as for creating fuels, medicines, chemicals and consumer goods. Until then, most scientists had attempted to understand how each part of the enzyme worked so they could design enzymes.
It is similar to the black box approach of artificial intelligence, she said. “There are a lot of parallels with AI and not just generative AI, but with artificial intelligence. Because these are navigating complex problems. Engineering an enzyme is a tremendously complex problem where we can’t sit down and specify all the interactions that are important in the design – nobody’s been able to do that.
“So machine learning and AI are very good at seeing the important patterns. We may not perceive it in the same way that the machine does it. But the machine catches those patterns and can greatly speed up the process of enzyme engineering. I do a lot of AI work myself.
“They’re both methodologies for traversing complex landscapes, we’d say. And you can meld them. Evolutionary search is a very simple search process on a complex landscape. Machine learning can do it in a different way. And there are many opportunities for melding these processes.”
TAF is keen for more people to nominate women for its prize. Dr Markku Ellilä, the academy’s chief executive, said: “The problem is structural and requires that women are encouraged to work in science at a young age. We aim to participate in this work through cooperation with universities and, for instance, by organising pitching contests for doctoral students and nominating candidates for Singapore’s Global Young Scientists Summit.”
The chair of the academy’s board, Minna Palmroth, professor in computational space physics, said that progress was being made. “Within this nominations round we pilot-tested purely women-targeted content in our nominations campaign, which gained promising results. However, there is still a lot to do, and that is why the prize will continue to encourage an increasing number of women to be nominated in the coming years.”
Aston University 3D printing engineer wins Female Innovator of 2023 award
IMAGE:
RENIA GKOUNTIOU
view moreCREDIT: 2023 INNOVATION AWARDS
- She was nominated for her role in helping SMEs use and develop 3D printing
- She is based at the Advanced Prototyping Facility which increases businesses’ awareness of 3D printing opportunities.
An Aston University engineer has been recognised at the 2023 Innovation Awards.
Renia Gkountiou who is as an engineer and technician within the University’s Advanced Prototyping Facility project won the title of Female Innovator for 2023.
She was nominated by professionals in her field for her role helping small to medium size businesses use and develop additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing.
Renia has been working at the Advanced Prototyping Facility (APF) project for just over two years. It was set up by Aston University to increase businesses’ awareness of the opportunities available through additive manufacture, also known as 3D Printing.
The project has helped 75 companies improve efficiency and effectiveness of their existing designs and to develop new prototypes and products.
Renia said: “Winning the award of Female Innovator of the Year at the Innovation Awards 2023 is not just a personal achievement but a testament to the dedication and hard work of the most incredible team in APF over the last two years.
“Innovation has always been at the heart of my career journey. We have leveraged 3D printing across a variety of projects in different sectors, spanning art, engineering and healthcare, all of which have yielded tangible benefits for society.
“These projects have involved the creation of novel product designs, prototypes and the development of materials in close collaboration with other departments at Aston University. The resulting designs and components not only exhibit improved efficiency but also cost-effectiveness, and an eco-friendly approach when contrasted with traditional manufacturing methods.”
Also nominated for other awards were the team’s project director Professor David Webb and additive manufacturing engineer and designer William Utting.
Last year Aston University became the second UK university to have an engineering department awarded Athena Swan Gold which recognises a commitment to advancing the careers of women and promoting gender equality.
Professor Stephen Garrett, executive dean of the University’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said: "We are immensely proud of the accomplishments achieved by Renia, William and David in their respective nominated categories.
“These honours not only epitomise individual excellence but also represent the culture of innovation and collaboration that we are actively fostering within the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.
“As we eagerly anticipate the formal launch of Design Factory Birmingham, the role of the APF team in amplifying this culture is set to be invaluable."
The judges assessed the nominations and then put forward a shortlist which went to a public vote.
The five finalists in each category were interviewed by an independent judging panel from a range of organisations including NatWest, EY, and Make UK.
The awards were held on 27 October at the Eastside Rooms in central Birmingham.
NASA’s Sandra Irish wins 2023 Society of Women Engineers Award
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SANDRA IRISH, LEAD STRUCTURES ENGINEER FOR NASA’S JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE, STANDS IN FRONT OF THE NEARLY FULLY TESTED OBSERVATORY SHE DEDICATED A SIGNIFICANT PART OF HER CAREER TO WORKING ON, JUST PRIOR TO ITS SHIPMENT TO THE LAUNCH SITE.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN
view moreCREDIT: NORTHROP GRUMMAN
Sandra Irish, mechanical systems lead structures engineer for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, has been selected to receive the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Resnik Challenger Medal Award for her visionary contributions to the development, testing, transport, and launch of NASA’s premier space telescope since 2006. The medal was awarded during the World’s Largest Conference for Women in Engineering and Technology or WE23, which took place Oct. 26-28 in Los Angeles.
As an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for over 40 years, Irish’s mechanical systems expertise has helped to ensure the successful operation of many NASA programs including the Webb telescope.
As Webb’s lead structures engineer, Irish led a group of 12 engineers that performed meticulous analysis and testing which helped confirm that the observatory’s mechanical design was fit to survive the rigors of spaceflight and on-orbit operations. While Irish’s primary focus was on preparing the telescope for a long life of service in space, she was also intimately involved in safely transporting the telescope to various locations around the United States for testing and assembly, and ultimately to its final destination where it launched from Europe’s Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana. Her steadfast dedication and expansive mechanical systems knowledge were key factors in the success of the notedly complex Webb mission. In addition to performing her duties on Webb, she served, and still actively serves, as the group lead for NASA Goddard’s mechanical systems analysis and simulation branch.
“I am honored to be this year’s recipient of SWE’s Resnik Challenger Medal Award for my role in Webb,” said Irish. “For 16 years of my engineering career at NASA, I worked on designing, building, testing, and delivering the most amazing telescope that NASA has ever launched into space. It was a joy to lead Webb’s structures team of such dedicated and talented engineers. Each day we tackled challenging design and test problems together, which resulted in a telescope that is successfully operating a million miles away! I smile every time a new image or discovery is shared with the world. It was wonderful to have been a part of the Webb team!”
About the Resnik Challenger Medal Award
The Resnik Challenger Medal was established in 1986 to honor SWE’s Dr. Judith A. Resnik, NASA mission specialist on the Challenger space shuttle flight lost Jan. 28, 1986. It is awarded for visionary contributions to space programs to an individual who identifies as a woman with at least ten years of experience. This award acknowledges a specific engineering breakthrough or achievement that has expanded the horizons of human activities in space.
SWE strives to advance and honor the contributions of women at all stages of their careers and recognize the successes of SWE members and individuals who enhance the engineering profession through contributions to the industry, education, and the community.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
For more information about NASA’s Webb telescope visit: www.nasa.gov/webb
James Tapper
Sun, 5 November 2023
Photograph: skyNext/Alamy
Women experience a “gender tenure gap”, lasting in CEO roles at publicly listed companies for shorter periods than men, according to new research which may support the idea that female leaders are subject to a “glass cliff” where they are set up to fail.
Analysis of companies listed on 12 stock exchanges around the world, including the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250, shows that since 2018 women have lasted an average of 5.2 years as chief executives compared to 8.1 years for men.
Laura Sanderson, the UK head of Russell Reynolds, the executive search firm which conducted the research, said the tenure gap was explained partly because some men had been chief executives for decades, including one who had been in post for 39 years.
“While the sample size is too small to be significant, we also need to consider whether the data may support the glass cliff theory,” she said.
The concept of the glass cliff is that women are more likely to be appointed as leaders when an organisation is in a time of crisis, so that their position is seen as more precarious than male counterparts.
Researchers at the University of Exeter, Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam, found in 2005 that women were more likely to be appointed as board members after a company’s share price had performed badly.
Professor Ryan, who is now director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at the Australian National University in Canberra, told the Observer that the Russell Reynolds analysis was “robust and added to the body of work in this area”.
“If women are more likely to take on leadership roles in times of crisis, then it follows that their time is office is likely to be stressful, more heavily scrutinised and shorter in tenure,” she said.
Related: Bank cut my bonus because I had a baby, says MP leading City sexism inquiry
“This reduced tenure could be for a number of reasons – because there is often higher turnover in times of crisis, because they are judged as not performing well, even though poor performance was in train before their appointment, or because when things start to turn around, men come back into leadership roles.”
Glass cliffs are not universal, she added, but further research has found evidence in other areas. For example, in 2010 researchers established that women standing for the Conservatives were more likely to contest seats held by other parties by a greater margin.
There are currently nine women who are chief executives of FTSE 100 companies. Denise Wilson, the chief executive of FTSE Women Leaders, which is seeking to increase the number of women on boards of companies in the FTSE 350 and 50 of the UK’s largest private companies, said that the gender tenure gap study was “an important piece of research”.
“From a UK perspective, we have made significant progress for women in almost every metric and measure,” she said. “But the CEO has been the stumbling block where we are struggling to make progress.”
Chief executive roles have a very low turnover, she said, which makes progress harder.
“I think men can enjoy a greater followership – support within the organisation. They can suffer big setbacks and rise again. Women who have been CEOs tend to go off to an alternative career.
“People tend to line up very quickly under the boss, but when that person is no longer as secure as people thought, that can gather momentum.”
However, she said that there was cause for optimism. The number of women on FTSE 350 boards is now 41%, up from 9.5% in 2011, and appointing women is “now the norm”. Russell Reynolds also found in a survey of 1,500 leaders worldwide that there were no significant differences in how women and men were perceived by the people who worked for them, showing that they were equally effective as leaders, although women were seen as being better at coaching and development.
Sanderson said that more women had moved into CEO roles having been a non-executive director on the company’s board.
“It happens often with men,” she said. “It shows that getting more women on boards generally has been working in terms of also getting more women into the CEO succession. One of the things I say to clients is that if you can have a non-exec on your board who could be a potential successor, that’s just good succession planning.”
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