ALD22: Professor Neena Gupta, Mathematician

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Neena Gupta

Professor Neena Gupta

Neena Gupta, born in India in 1984, is a mathematician specialising in commutative algebra and affine algebraic geometry. She is based at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).

Gupta used to spend hours doing maths as a young girl and loved solving mathematical problems. She was initially taught by her mother before going to school and then college, graduating in Mathematics. She eventually received a PhD in algebraic geometry and then became a visiting scientist at the ISI. She took up a short fellowship at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and then won an assistant professorship position from the Indian Department of Science and Technology, allowing her to return to the ISI. She is now an associate professor at the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Unit at ISI.

In 2014, Gupta solved the Zariski Cancellation Problem originally posed in 1949 by Oscar Zariski, who was a highly influential mathematician in algebraic geometry. The Zariski Cancellation Problem is considered to be one of the most difficult problems in maths, and was a topic that Gupta ruminated on while she was completing her PhD. She describes the problem thus: “The cancellation problem asks that if you have cylinders over two geometric structures, and that have similar forms, can one conclude that the original base structures have similar forms?”. For completing this problem, she was awarded the Young Scientists Award, with the Indian National Science Academy considering her work the best research they had seen in algebraic geometry in some time. 

Gupta has also won other awards for her work. She won the Saraswathi Cowsik Medal (2013), the Swarnajayanti Fellowship (2014), the A.K. Agarwal Award (2015), and the Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries (2021). She was also the youngest recipient of the highly coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prize in 2019, which is awarded by the Prime Minister of India and provides a monthly endowment until age 65. She is still studying Zariski today.

Further Reading

ALD22 Podcasts: Techish, Abadesi Osunsade & Michael Berhane

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British tech founders Abadesi Osunsade (Hustle Crew) and Michael Berhane (POCIT) talk about the intersection of tech, pop culture and life. Recent episodes covered: 

  • Drama at Google & Meta all hands meetings
  • Everyone wants Instagram to be Instagram again
  • Finessing remote-work to suit your lifestyle
  • Apple’s new iOS 16 features
  • Sheryl Sandberg steps down as Meta (Facebook) COO

You can: 

Listen: on Apple Podcasts
Follow on Twitter: @techishpod @Abadesi @michaelberhane_
Visit their website: techishpod.com

ALD22: Dorothy Spicer, Aeronautical Engineer

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Dorothy Spicer

Dorothy Spicer

Dorothy Spicer was an aviatrix and the first woman to earn an advanced qualification in aeronautical engineering.

Born in 1908, Spicer learnt to fly in 1929, when she was in her very early 20s. She took lessons at the London Aeroplane Club at Stag Lane Aerodrome, where she met pilot Pauline Gower. They became friends and started a business before flying in the Crimson Fleet air circus and then the British Hospitals’ air pageant together.

Spicer joined the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) in 1932, and studied for her ‘B’ engineers licence. She couldn’t access formal courses because women were barred from training at technical schools. But she persuaded Saunders Roe, which built the Spartan Aircraft plane she and Gower flew, to let her do the practical and theoretical training at their workshop in Cowes on the Isle of Wight. She was the first woman in the world to attain her ‘B’ licence.

She was also only the second woman to earn a ‘C’ licence, for ground engineers, after Amy Johnson. In 1935, she studied at Napier Engineering in Action and Cirrus Hermes in Hull to become the first woman to earn a ‘D’ licence. That licence authorised her to inspect, pass out and repair engines and airframes, and qualified her to build aircraft, airframes and engines from scratch and to approve the materials needed.

By this point, she was the first woman in the world to hold all four Air Ministry Ground Engineer’s licences.

In 1934, Spicer and Gower became the first all-female Air Ambulance crew, flying Gower’s three-seater plane as part of the Surrey Red Cross Brigade. They were the first Red Cross Air Ambulance anywhere in the world, and their Commandant was Mrs Victor Bruce, née Mildred Petre.

Two years later, she became the chief engineer for British Empire Air Displays, a flying circus that toured the UK. In 1937, She presented a paper on the “Selection and Treatment of Steels for Aero-Engines” at the WES conference.

A year later, despite having married, she took a job with the Air Registration Board and became the first woman in the British Empire to receive a technical appointment in civil aviation. In 1940, she became an air observer and research assistant with the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, where she worked on the development of new aircraft and aviation equipment.

She and her husband, Flight Lieutenant Richard Pearse, died on a commercial flight to Rio de Janeiro in 1946, when bad weather caused the plane they were on to crash into a mountain just ten miles from the airport. There were no survivors. She was just 38.

Spicer was a founding member of the Society of Licenced Aircraft Engineers, who created the Dorothy Spicer Memorial Award in her honour.

Further Reading

Understanding micromanagement

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Cynthia Sanchez, a senior technical project management at SUSE, explains how to spot micromanagement, why it’s problematic, and how to stop yourself become a micromanager.

This video was provided by SUSE, one of Ada Lovelace Day’s generous sponsors.

About SUSE

SUSE logoSUSE is a global leader in innovative, reliable and enterprise-grade open source solutions. We specialise in Enterprise Linux, Kubernetes Management, and Edge solutions, and collaborate with partners and communities to empower our customers to innovate everywhere – from the data centre, to the cloud, to the edge and beyond. SUSE puts the “open” back in open source, giving customers the agility to tackle innovation challenges today and the freedom to evolve their strategy and solutions tomorrow. Follow SUSE on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Advice from a frontline manager

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By Katerina Arzhayev, SUSE’s Leader of COO Initiatives

At the age of 25, I began managing people for the first time. My new direct report was just starting her full-time career. Seemingly overnight, I became responsible for her professional and personal development. As an individual contributor, my success was based on my performance. Now, my success had a component outside of my control: someone else’s performance. So, I did what anyone would and sought council. The best advice I heard came from a surprising source – my nineteen year old sister who had been people managing for several years as a supervisor in the service industry.

I was told that if I worked hard, studied often and performed well, one day I would manage a team. My sister didn’t get the memo, so three months into her role as a barista she volunteered for a Supervisor role to manage a team of peers – people she laughed and joked with, 17 and 18 year olds she considered friends. Overnight, she became a boss.

“I stopped treating my coworkers as if they are my family” she said. “I forced myself to have the mindset that you’re supposed to have in a service job, which is ‘I am here to work’. I had the mindset, ‘If I don’t like you, I won’t like you’, but I am a shift lead. So even if I am mad, I am still nice to them. I got a more realistic view of my job.”

This important realisation helped her understand that difficult conversations and critical feedback are not personal – not to her, as the giver, and not to the employee, as the receiver. Her communication of company processes and policy did not make her a bad person, no matter the side glances or hushed complaints.

Yet, here I was, afraid of delivering any feedback that could be perceived as negative for fear my relationship with my new team would be damaged. How would my entire personality, built on being liked, handle a potential conflict?

“When I manage, I remove myself from the situation,” she said. “If I am managing someone, I put their needs and perspective first. It’s not about how I feel. If, all of a sudden, they get emotional, I don’t take that personally. I am the manger.”

Being a manager is a different kind of role, she explained, but it is not one where you need to change who you are, or who you want to be.

“I know all the employees on a personal level. I try to customise my approach based on the person, because I know them. I did my research. I am not a people pleaser, but I am not shy. I am not going to stay quiet if someone needs managing.”

Yet, this takes time. Step by step, we can build those relationships. My sister’s rules are simple and by following them, both her managers and her team know who she is and what kind of manager she aspires to be. This may seem like such basic advice, yet all of us need the :

  1. Don’t talk about me with other employees, or about other employees with me. If you have something to say, talk to me in private, say it to my face. Don’t say it to other people whom it doesn’t concern. Don’t be afraid to address the problem head on, when it arises. Do not let things fester. Avoiding conflict causes longer, and more drawn out, conflict.
  2. Don’t set me up to say things. Be direct with your questions and comments, instead of leading and secretive. Be upfront, don’t play your cards. Don’t manipulate the situation. Through open conversation and an honest desire to resolve things, we can all move forward.
  3. Don’t focus on me. Micromanaging sows dissent and turns off my creative desire to be and do better. When I know everything is set, I stop being proactive. I stop demanding more from my team. I am in this role for a reason, I was promoted for a reason, I manage people for a reason. Provide me with support and guidance, but also let me take risks and fail.

Note: The content of this interview was in the scope of primary research conducted by Katerina Arzhayev with the goal of describing the average career journey of women, and identifying and documenting their best practices for managing and being managed.

About SUSE

SUSE logoSUSE is a global leader in innovative, reliable and enterprise-grade open source solutions. We specialise in Enterprise Linux, Kubernetes Management, and Edge solutions, and collaborate with partners and communities to empower our customers to innovate everywhere – from the data centre, to the cloud, to the edge and beyond. SUSE puts the “open” back in open source, giving customers the agility to tackle innovation challenges today and the freedom to evolve their strategy and solutions tomorrow. Follow SUSE on Twitter or LinkedIn.