Celebrating Women Engineers and Their Lasting Legacies

What you’ll learn:

• Insight into notable women engineers.
• Their engineering accomplishments.
• Details behind their innovative designs.

Women’s Month, and especially International Women’s Day on March 8, is a time to recognize the groundbreaking contributions of women in the engineering fields whose innovations helped make life better for all.

While the number of women within the engineering disciplines has been small compared to their male colleagues, their accomplishments have been no less significant. They have paved the way for future generations of women who are interested in becoming engineers and pushed the boundaries of what can be achieved for those who do. In this roundup, we will look at several notable women engineers and their amazing accomplishments.

Willie Hobbs Moore

Willie Hobbs Moore was the first African American woman in the U.S. to earn a PhD in physics. She was also the first African-American woman to obtain bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1961.

Over the next few years, Moore worked for several companies, including as a junior engineer at Bendix Aerospace Systems, where she calculated the radiation from various types of plasmas and wrote proposals. By 1962, Moore took a job at Barnes Engineering Company, where she worked on approximating the IR radiation from wakes of space reentry vehicles. By the end of 1963, Moore was working at Senior Dynamics as a theoretical analyst of stress-optical devices.

Moore went on to become a research associate at the Institute of Science and Technology at the University of Michigan, where she modeled optical hypersonic wakes and certified existing flow-field models. In 1967, Moore began working at KMS Industries as a system analyst, where she supported optics design staff and established computer requirements for optics, and by 1968, she worked as a senior analyst at Datamax Corp.

At the end of the 1970s, Moore would find herself working for Ford as an assembly engineer, and expanded the company’s use of Japanese engineering and manufacturing methods.

Christina Cyr

Christina Cyr is an electrical engineer who specializes in designing circuit boards for smartphones and IoT devices. She has amassed over a decade of designing IoT devices and related equipment for communication and data collection, using technologies such as GNSS (GPS, etc.), NFC, BLE, Wi-Fi, and 2G/3G/4G/LTE. She also holds multiple patents in the field of mobile communication devices and systems, and has taught over 300 people nationwide how to make their own smartphones.

Cyr designed her own smartphone, the Cyrcle Phone, which offers a unique open-source circular design. She said it “reframes our relationship with technology in a more meaningful and beautiful way.”

Kimberly Bryant

Kimberly Bryant is well-known as the founder of the nonprofit Black Girls Code, but she is also an accomplished electrical engineer who has worked with companies such as Diagnostics, Genentech, Merck, and Novartis Vaccines. She was inspired to found Black Girls Code by her daughter and the difficulties she had finding a suitable course in the Bay area when expressing interest in learning computer programming.

Since founding the company, Bryant has become a leader in inclusion initiatives in technology, earning recognition from Smithsonian Magazine, the White House, and more. She recently served as the keynote speaker at the 2021 SXSW EDU.

Jessica O. Matthews

Jessica Mathews is another notable engineer who’s best known for developing Soccket—a soccer ball that acts like a mobile power generator. After noticing the emissions emanating from diesel generators while attending her aunt’s wedding in Nigeria, Matthews started developing a soccer ball that stores kinetic energy while at play. According to Matthews, a half-hour of play with the soccer ball generates enough energy to power a small, attachable LED light for three hours, allowing kids to finish their homework after dark.

Matthews would go on to found Uncharted Power, a tech company that produced Soccket and a jump rope version. It eventually evolved into a software-as-a-service (SAAS) sustainable infrastructure company that creates solutions to improve the efficiency and accessibility of energy, water, air, transit, and connectivity infrastructure.   

AnnMarie Thomas

AnnMarie Thomas is a mechanical engineer and an advocate for early engineering education. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Ocean Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2001) and went on to earn her PhD (2006) in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Thomas is currently an associate professor in the School of Engineering, the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship, and the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas.

Thomas founded the now-closed Playful Learning Lab, which taught children engineering through playful exercises, and developed Squishy Circuits, an initiative to engage children in exploring electronics using Play-Doh. This initiative outlines the process of making conducting and insulating dough and how to build ICs using those materials. Thomas has also worked with myriad tech companies, including Disney Imagineering, LEGO Education, LEGO Foundation, Google, Alinea, OceanX, and numerous K-12 schools.

Johnetta MacCalla

Johnetta MacCalla is known for co-founding Zyrobotics, a STEM-related educational platform aimed at kids interested in the sciences. The company develops games and learning tools designed to address the diverse needs of children, especially those with differing abilities.

In 2018, Zybotics became the first recipient of a five-year, $25 million grant from Microsoft that would allow it to partner with the software giant to develop artificial intelligence aimed at enhancing accessibility and benefiting those with disabilities.

Before co-founding Zyrobotics, MacCalla served as CEO of Automated Switching and Controls Inc., as president of Advanced Systems Concepts Inc., and as a chairperson of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority Foundation. The innovator holds degrees from Brown University and Stanford University in applied mathematics and electrical engineering, respectively, and earned her PhD in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering from the University of Southern California.

Katya Celeste Echazarreta Gonzalez

Katya Celest Echazarreta Gonzalez is the first Mexican-born woman in space after taking part in Space for Humanity's Citizen Astronaut Program, which launched on June 4, 2022. Echazarreta earned her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from UCLA in 2019 and then went on to intern at NASA during her university undergraduate career. Later on, she served as a test lead for the Europa Clipper Ground Support Equipment group.

During her undergraduate career, Echazarreta was a research intern at Rutgers University in 2016 for their Research in Science and Engineering (RiSE) program. She was also a research assistant at UCLA for the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, where she experimented with various materials to serve as both the PCB and body of the robot while maintaining electrically isolated portions.

Echazarreta also began her television career as "Electric Kat" on a segment of Mission Unstoppable with Miranda Cosgrove, now in its fourth season. In addition, she’s a co-host of Netflix's YouTube series, Netflix IRL, which pits several singles seeking love to navigate its ups and downs through real and online connections, where they have to choose between virtual romance or the old-fashioned world of offline dating.

Ursula Burns

Ursula Burns is widely known for her tenure as the former CEO of Xerox, the first African-American to head a Fortune 500 company. After earning her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering in 1981, Burns interned at Xerox and officially became part of the company a year later.

By May of 2000, Burns was promoted to senior vice president of corporate strategic services and began working closely with soon-to-be CEO Anne Mulcahy in what both women have described as a true partnership. Two years later, Burns became president of business group operations.

Burns would eventually step down as CEO of Xerox in 2016 and go on to serve on the board of directors of multiple companies, including American Express, ExxonMobil, and Uber. She was the chairperson and CEO of VEON from late 2018 to early 2020 and was the Non-Executive Chairwoman of Teneo. Sadly, Burns passed away in 2019, but her legacy lives on through her memoir Where You Are Is Not Who You Are.

Anouk Wipprecht

Anouk Wipprecht is a Dutch fashion designer who integrates AI, sensors, and microcontrollers into exotic interactive clothing. She has produced a number of tech-enhanced designs that merge fashion and technology in an unusual way, creating technological couture with systems around the body that tend toward artificial intelligence. Projected as “host” systems on the human body, her designs move, breathe, and react to the environment around them.

Wipprecht’s spider dress is a great example of her engineering and fashion skills, which she explains incorporates sensors and movable arms on a dress that help to create a more defined boundary of personal space while employing a fierce style: “This robotic dress attacks when you come too close.”

Joan Horvath

Joan Horvath is an innovative aeronautical engineer known for her work with 3D printers to teach math to those who learn differently. Horvath stated that she’s a “recovering rocket scientist” who spent 16 years at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on the Magellan and TOPEX/Poseidon flight projects.

After working for NASA, Horvath became CEO of the now-defunct Takeoff Technologies, a robotics company that eventually went under. She went on to co-found Nonscriptum LLC, which focuses on teaching educators and scientists how to use maker tech. Horvath has also co-authored seven books for Apress, four more with MAKE, and numerous courses for LinkedIn Learning. All are focused on teaching math and science.