ALD Podcast, Ep 4: Abbie Hutty & Anne-Marie Imafidon

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Welcome to the Ada Lovelace Day podcast, highlighting the work of women in STEM. Each month, we talk to women from around the STEM world about their careers, as well as talking to women and men, about historic and modern women’s achievements, discoveries, and inventions.

In this episode

01:30: Senior spacecraft structures engineer Abbie Hutty talks about how Airbus’ ExoMars Rover Project will search for life on Mars, and the challenges of building a portable lab that can both do delicate science and withstand the rigours of the Red Planet.

22:30 Head STEMette Anne-Marie Imafidon talks about the inspiration she’s drawn from the work of Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley, software pioneer, entrepreneur and child refugee. (You can watch Dame Stephanie’s 2015 TED talk at the bottom of this post.)

Ada Lovelace Day Live!

ALD Live is an entertaining evening of geekery, comedy and music suitable for everyone over the age of 12. If you’d like to enjoy a taster, take a look at our videos from 20152014 and 2013!

Our amazing ALD Live! speakers this year are:

  • Yewande Akinola, design engineer focused on sustainable water supply systems and the engineering design coordination of large projects in the built environment.
  • Dr Sheila Kanani, planetary physicist, science presenter, secondary school physics teacher and space comedienne with a background in astrophysics and astronomy.
  • Dr Kat Arney, science writer and broadcaster whose work has featured in the New Scientist, Wired, the Guardian, the Times Educational Supplement, BBC Radio 4, the Naked Scientists and more.
  • Jenny Duckett, developer with the Government Digital Service.
  • Dr Sara Santos, mathematician, director and founder of Maths Busking.
  • Dr Bissan Al-Lazikani, computational biologist working on drug discovery for Cancer Research UK.
  • Dr Anna Jones, deputy science leader for the British Antarctic Survey’s Atmosphere, Ice and Climate Team.

Early Bird tickets are £10, and available until 31 August from Eventbrite, so get yours now before they run out! Find out more about our speakers, venue, tickets and schedule.

Our interviewees

Abigail Hutty

Abbie HuttyAbbie Hutty is senior spacecraft structures engineer on Airbus’ ExoMars Rover Project. She gained her master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Surrey University where she received several awards and prizes for her achievements, including for her master’s thesis on the use of composites in spacecraft structures. She joined Astrium at Stevenage, now Airbus Defence and Space, as a mechanical engineer in 2010, and now leads a team of specialists in the design of the ExoMars Rover Vehicle Structure. In 2013, she was selected as the IMechE’s Young Member of the Year and later named as the IET’s Young Woman Engineer of the Year. You can follow Abbie on Twitter, at @A_Hutty.

You can also find out more about how the ExoMars Rover will search for life on Mars in Abbie’s ALD 2015 talk, available on YouTube and Figshare, and at the bottom of this post.

Anne-Marie Imafidon

Anne-Marie ImafidonAnne-Marie Imafidon is Head STEMette and cofounder of STEMettes – an award-winning social enterprise inspiring the next generation of females into science, technology, engineering and mathematics roles via a series of events and opportunities. In three years more than 7,000 girls across the UK, Ireland and Europe have attended STEMette experiences. As part of the initiative Anne-Marie has also co-founded Outbox Incubator: the worlds first tech incubator for teenage girls. She sits on the boards of Redfield Asset Management, Urban Development Music Foundation and Inspirational YOU. You can find out more about Anne-Marie on her website and follow the @STEMettes on Twitter.

Thanks to our sponsor

This podcast is brought to you thanks to the generous support of ARM, our exclusive semiconductor industry sponsor. You can learn more about ARM on their website at ARM.com and you can follow them on Twitter at @ARMHoldings.

If you would like to join ARM as a sponsor of the Ada Lovelace Day Podcast, please email us.

Get in touch!

If you’d like to send us feedback about the show, or if you’d like to take part, please email us. We’re especially interested in hear from men who would like to talk to us about the women in STEM who have influenced them, especially those women who are less well known.

Credits

Episode edited by Andrew Marks.

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Posted in Podcast.