Alice Ball was an American chemist who developed the first effective treatment for leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, which until then had a very poor prognosis and was highly stigmatised.
Born in 1892, Ball was the first woman and first African American to earn a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, and was also the university’s first African American chemistry lecturer.
Since the 1300s, leprosy had been somewhat ineffectively treated using chaulmoogra oil, made from the seeds of the Hydnocarpus wightianus tree. The oil was sticky and thick, making it unsuitable for topical application. When injected, it tended to form blisters under the skin which could develop into abscesses. Its awful taste frequently caused vomiting when it was taken orally.
Ball developed a method to process the raw oil, via saponification, acidification and finally purification to produce ethyl ester compounds which were water soluble and thus more easily absorbed by the body, whilst maintaining the oil’s therapeutic properties. In 1915, she was made head of the chemistry department.
She died a year later, aged just 24, before she had a chance to publish her findings. Her master’s degree advisor, Arthur L Dean – who was also a chemist and later became president of the University of Hawaii – mass produced the chaulmoogra extract and treated some 78 patients at the Kalihi Hospital, each of whom recovered sufficiently to be released. He published his results and named the process after himself, without ever mentioning the work that Ball had done.
Despite an attempt in 1922 by Harry Hollmann, an assistant surgeon at a leprosarium in Honolulu, to gain recognition for Ball, her name is still not widely known, although her process is now known as the Ball Method. The University of Hawaii has named a scholarship for her, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has added her name to its iconic frieze, along with those of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Florence Nightingale, joining those of 23 male medical innovators.
Ada Lovelace Day is just a month away and we have three awesome webinars lined up for you. All three will be streamed live on our YouTube and Facebook pages, plus you can sign up for each one on Eventbrite and we’ll send you handy reminders so you don’t miss out!
Frontiers in Engineering
In partnership with STEM Wana Trust, we invite you to join Sujata Roy, system planning engineer at Transpower, Renée Young, associate mechanical engineer at Beca, Natasha Mudaliar (right), operations manager at Reliance Reinforcing, and Victoria Clark, senior environmental engineer at Beca, for a fascinating conversation about the challenges and opportunities of engineering.
13:00 NZST, 12 Oct: Perfect for people in New Zealand, Australia, and the Americas.
Fusing Tech & Art in Games
The technical artist is a relatively new kind of role in the games industry, yet the possibilities for those who pursue this career path to create and merge art and technology together are endless.
Ada Lovelace Day and #RaiseTheGame invite you to join Kristrun Fridriksdottir (right), Jodie Azhar, and Emma Roseburgh for our tech art webinar. This panel will discuss what kind of work the tech artist does, the cutting edge of tech artistry, and how tech artists are pushing the boundaries and creating new experiences for players.
13:00 BST, 12 Oct: Perfect for people in the UK, Europe, Africa, Middle East, India, for early birds in the Americas and night owls in AsiaPacific.
Hypersleep is a common theme in science fiction, but what does science have to say about putting humans into suspended animation? What can we learn from hibernating animals? What’s the difference between hibernation and sleep? What health impacts would extended hypersleep have?
Ada Lovelace Day and the Arthur C. Clarke Award invite you to join science fiction author Anne Charnock, Prof Kelly Drew, who studies hibernation in squirrels, and Prof Gina Poe (right), an expert on the relationship between sleep and memory, for a discussion of whether hypersleep in humans is possible.
19:00 BST, 12 Oct: Perfect for people in the UK, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
We are offering a year’s free access to our Finding Ada Network mentoring program to women in STEM. We will provide you with access to our mentoring platform, where we will match you with a mentoring partner, as well as our online content covering careers, professional development, soft skills and more. We’ll also support you with webinars about topics like goal setting, being a good mentoring partner and how to create good habits.
We will give priority to women from who are from a low-income background or are the first in your immediate family to study or work in STEM, and who are in the UK, but thanks to some generous donations we are opening up this scheme to all women in STEM.
We are particularly keen to hear from mentors who can help undergraduates, graduates and PhD students to understand their career options, whether that’s in academia or industry, and to take their next steps. We have students in chemistry, biology, physics, neuroscience, maths, astrophysics, engineering and computer science/programming who are looking for mentors. So if you’d like to improve your leadership skills and give back to the community, please apply to become a mentors now.
You can expect the mentoring program to take up around 1 to 2 hours a month for mentors, and 2 to 3 hours a month for mentees, although obviously in both cases you get out what you put in, so you may choose to devote more time to your mentoring partnership.
FindingAda founder Suw Charman-Anderson is going to host a series of audio conversations with women in STEM on Twitter Spaces over the next few weeks. She’ll be having an information chat for half an hour or so, and you’ll be able to ask questions via Twitter.
Spaces is Twitter’s new audio broadcast service. You can listen via Twitter.com or on the official Twitter app on any device. Just click the link below and you’ll be taken to the conversation, or keep an eye out in the Twitter app for a notification. You can also set a reminder if you click this link before the broadcast starts.
Thurs 10 June, 15:00 BST: Shraddha Surana on mentoring
Shraddha Surana is the global data community lead at Thoughtworks, with an interest in anything data, algorithms & sciences. She has published papers & given conference talks on machine learning and has worked in BFSI, retail, astrophysics & life science domains. Along with her job, she mentors several students from India & Africa. She is the co-organiser of the ‘Bridge&Beyond’ series that helps to bridge the academic-industry gap. She strives to create & be part of a system where people look out for each other.
Thurs 24 June, 19:00 BST: Sue Nelson on women in space
Sue will be talking to Suw about NASA’s bid to put the first woman on the Moon, European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti going back into space, and the ESA’s call for astronauts. Spaces link to come.
An award-winning radio producer, science journalist and former BBC TV science and environment correspondent, Sue has reported on science for all the BBC’s national television and radio news programmes.
Sue has presented numerous Radio 4 programmes, was editor of The Biologist (2010-15) and produces documentaries for BBC radio. She is a published playwright, has written for a TV game show, most of the UK’s newspapers and has had several screenplays made into short films. Her latest book, Wally Funk’s Race for Space, was published in 2019 (USA and UK paperback).
Thurs 8 July, 19:00 BST: Dr Helen Scales on her new book, The Brilliant Abyss
Helen and Suw will be talking about Helen’s new book, The Brilliant Abyss, which “brings to life the majesty and mystery of an alien realm that nonetheless sustains us, while urgently making clear the price we could pay if it is further disrupted”. In the UK, you can buy direct from Bloomsbury and get a 20% discount with the code OCEAN20. The Brilliant Abyss will be published in the US and Canada in early July. Spaces link to come.
Dr Helen Scales is a marine biologist, writer and broadcaster. She is author of the Guardian bestseller Spirals in Time, New Scientist book of the year Eye of the Shoal, and the children’s book The Great Barrier Reef. She writes for National Geographic Magazine, the Guardian, and New Scientist, among others. She teaches at Cambridge University and is science advisor for the marine conservation charity Sea Changers. Helen divides her time between Cambridge, England, and the wild Atlantic coast of France.
Panel discussion from the Finding Ada Conference 2020.
Synopsis
Why create a women’s equality advocacy group? What challenges do founders face? And what are their goals for their organisations? We also talked about using social media to grow communities, different financial models for community organising, fundraising, and the difference between grassroots advocacy and business-backed groups.
Featuring:
Suw Charman-Anderson, founder of Finding Ada.com
Vanessa Vallely OBE, founder of WeAreTechWomen
Elisabeth Holm, founder of Sisterhood of Native American Coders
April Moh, executive sponsor of SUSE’s Women in Tech Network
About our speakers
Suw Charman-Anderson
Suw Charman-Anderson is the founder of FindingAda.com which inspires and supports women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) with three major projects: Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of women’s achievements in STEM; the Finding Ada Conference, an online event covering careers, equality, and widening participation; and the Finding Ada Network, an online mentorship platform.
Prior to working full-time on Ada Lovelace Day, Suw was a social technologist and, as one of the UK’s social media pioneers, worked with clients worldwide. A freelance journalist, she has written about social media, technology and publishing for The Guardian, CIO Magazine and Forbes. In 2005, Suw co-founded the Open Rights Group, a digital rights campaigning group. As its first Executive Director, she prepared the organisation’s response to the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, and gave evidence on digital rights management to the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group.
Vanessa is one of the UK’s most well-networked women and has provided keynotes on a variety of career related topics for over 500 companies worldwide. Vanessa is also one of the UK’s most prominent figures in gender equality and often provides guidance and consultancy to both government and corporate organisations who are seeking to attract, develop and retain their female talent. Vanessa was awarded her OBE in June 2018 for her services to women and the economy.
At the height of her successful 25 year career in the financial services, Vanessa launched the award winning WeAreTheCity.com in 2008 as a vehicle to help women progress in their careers. WeAreTheCity.com now has over 120,000 members and provides resources/conferences/awards/jobs to women across the UK. Vanessa is the also the -founder of UK wide diversity forum Gender Networks. Gender Networks (formerly The Network of Networks) brings together diversity leaders from 85 cross sector firms to share best practice on a quarterly basis. Vanessa is also the author of the book “Heels of Steel: Surviving and Thriving in the Corporate World” which tracks her career and shares 13 chapters of tips to succeed in the workplace.
Elisabeth Holm, an aspiring computer scientist with a passion for AI/Machine learning, has been an ambassador and advocate for girls in STEM for 8 years. Elisabeth is a former research intern at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and “graduate” of the Qualcomm (Q-Camp) – Women in Technology (WiTech) multi-year program for girls in STEM. Raised in a multi-generational home and with ancestry from Indigenous Americas, Elisabeth founded the Sisterhood of Native American Coders (SONAC) to apply her talents in computer science to support an underserved community that is both personal to her and honours her late grandmother. Elisabeth hopes to bring access, exposure, and mentoring to underrepresented Native American girls as to address the disparities in their opportunities to learn, and inspire the next generation of young female innovators. Ms Holm is an avid programmer, roboticist, the Founder of the “Best in Class” Python Club at her school, and currently enrolled in the MIT 6-month Online Science Technology and Engineering Community program (MOSTEC).
As Chief Communications Officer, April Moh leads SUSE’s integrated communications team spanning brand strategy, public relations, internal and executive communications and customer marketing. She is also the executive sponsor of SUSE’s first employee network group – the Women in Tech Network.
April is a passionate believer in the power of influence, and she has spent over a decade of her career in the technology space shaping the world’s perceptions of companies small and large.
Prior to SUSE, April was VP and Global Head of Communications for SAP – managing integrated communications for their ERP business. She has also managed communications for Microsoft and Concur. April began her career in the start-up world helping daring upstarts gain market share, launch their companies, secure funding and successfully get acquired.
Recognized for her ability to lead teams from vision to execution and impact via strong cross-company collaboration, April’s core belief is that leading with intent drives bold business outcomes.