Since I was a little girl I loved to know about all sorts of topics. Everything I learned was fascinating and I tried to learn something different every day. I loved to read all the texts on my hands. And through reading, I found a lot of opened doors to other dimensions. Marie Curie was a brilliant role model for a girl like me, but also a very sad one, because of the sadness in her eyes. But “a future as a scientist” (even sad) seemed the most interesting option for me, because curiosity about knowing everything, was the main incentive.
Please tell us briefly about your role in the company / at your organization:
At UPC-Barcelona TECH I am a professor of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering and a researcher in several topics related to Materials Science and Engineering. I am the deputy director of the Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering School of Terrassa.
In my President of the Catalan Society of Technology role, I am doing a hard task of dissemination related to highlighting the names of inventions of STEAM women in history, to help to create vocations in young girls.
Your interest in STEM
Hedy Lamarr, Irene Joliot Curie, Laura Tremosa, my mother’s grandmother, my mother, my female friends and my students.
Your studies
To be valued for my skills and for what I am doing, rather than for who or how I am. If I’m good at doing my job, I want to be valued for that reason, independently of a woman or a man.
You at work
I am very proud of the girls mentoring program, “M2m”. I started it 11 years ago and has allowed many girls to reach their professional lives with a huge development of their empowerment skills. They are very good in their profiles, but by using the M2m program, some of them have improved their abilities for leading or for feeling strong in their workplaces, even when they are part of a minority.
I would like my students, years after they left the classroom, to remember me fondly. I love it when my former students greet me at any place with their smiley faces. This is very pleasant for me.
They must have their dreams, no matter how impossible they look, because someday they will realize that dreams have come true.
Their dreams are their own, and nobody can tell them about the right to have them. Those dreams can become a reality (or a part of them), and it will take a lot of work, and a lot of effort, but in the end it will be worth it. No hurries, no worries.
Your point of view
Highlighting the profiles of those brilliant women who contributed to making our lives much better, but unknown.
Highlighting their names and inventions to generate role models for our girls, because many of those brilliant women were the assistants of “brilliant science men”. I claim for their names and histories.
I am trying to include the name of Anna Bertha Ludwig (Roentgen’s assistant) in the X-ray discovery story. Or the name of Lise Meitner (Otto Hahn’s assistant) with capital letters, in the story of nuclear fission. Those names, as well as the names of Ida Noddack-Tacke (Walter Noddack’s assistant), and Mileva Maric (Einstein’s assistant), have been never included in textbooks but they should. Moreover, they deserve to be in. Making visible all those women who have been before us is necessary to create and promote vocations.
The STEAM world is a very exciting one, and there are many, many things expected to be done, expecting this talent that will help to make our current and future lives much better. All these girls with STEAM skills and their talent must be recognized and rescued. They will be happy in STEAM and we, as a part of the world, will be happy with them in it.
Please, do not miss them!
More than 30% of girls are involved in STEAM. All sorts of STEAM studies linked to microelectronics should have 50/50 in population. Then, it should be easy to find 50/50 working in microelectronics.
To finish with
My main challenge is that it is not necessary to highlight relevant profiles like mine, that the work of the women who have had to promote STEAM vocations naturally is part of history, without having to highlight it.
A challenge is that all boys and girls have the information and freedom to be what they want to be, without limits, without prejudice and without having to justify themselves.
Ambitious maybe.
I read, watch theatre, listen concert music, make sports, love scuba diving and travel all around the world.