Ilya Espino de Marotta is an engineer best known for leading the Panama Canal Expansion Project as Executive Vice President for Engineering in the Panama Canal Authority. Espino de Marotta was appointed to the role in 2012 and was the first woman in the history of the Panama Canal Authority to hold the role. Espino de Marotta said that some male colleagues questioned her appointment and is quoted as saying, "I wear the pink hard-hat to make a statement that a woman can do this job." Marotta describes the Panama Canal Expansion project as "a dream job for any engineer". Alongside responsibility for the physical expansion of the canal Marotta also oversaw other investment projects including, all the construction contracts, new bridges and purchasing. Every month during the expansion phase of the project, she directed a videography team from a helicopter to monitor work on the canal.
Jane Goodall is a British ethologist, known for her exceptionally detailed and long-term research on the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Goodall, who was interested in animal behavior from an early age, left school at age 18. She worked as a secretary and as a film production assistant until she gained passage to Africa. Once there, Goodall began assisting paleontologist and anthropologist Louis Leakey. The University of Cambridge in 1965 awarded Goodall a Ph.D. in ethology; she was one of very few candidates to receive a Ph.D. without having first possessed an A.B. degree. In 1977 she cofounded the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation n California; the center later moved its headquarters to the Washington, D.C., area. Over the years Goodall was able to correct a number of misunderstandings about chimpanzees. She found, for example, that the animals are omnivorous, not vegetarian; that they are capable of making and using tools; and, in short, that they have a set of hitherto unrecognized complex and highly developed social behaviors. Jane, a documentary about her life and work, appeared in 2017.
Treena Livingston Arinzeh made her foray into science and medicine having been encouraged by a high school teacher to explore the subjects. She holds a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania and has been lauded for her pioneering endeavors in stem cell research. In 2003 she successfully demonstrated how donor stem cells could be transplanted from one cell to another. Arinzeh is a professor of biomedical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Helen Greiner is the co-founder of the iRobot corporation which invented the Roomba vacuum cleaner. She was born in London and settled in NY when she was a young child. She was a wiz in science and was inspired to go into robotics after seeing Star Wars as a child. She attended MIT and became an engineer. She now is CEO of the Terhill Corporation which focuses on outdoor automation.