13 Sep 2015
Engineering, Math, Science, STEM Spark

#STEMSpark, Beautiful Minds and Beating Hearts: Meet Toronto native Ayman Nadeem of Khan Academy.

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Ayman Nadeem is a firm believer in social justice. It is fitting, then, that the University of Waterloo engineering graduate (2014 Class Valedictorian) has recently joined the future-gazing team at Khan Academy as a product manager.

Ayman, who is also a rapper and fitness enthusiast, spent the summer of 2014 in Istanbul, tutoring children at an orphanage. She chronicled the experience in her blog.

The vibrant, philosophical young woman, a daughter of Pakistani immigrants, exchanged thoughts with hEr VOLUTION about her own years in school in Toronto struggling with a learning disability and about her evolving ideas on education and technology. More

01 Jun 2015
Science, STEM Spark

#STEMSpark: Meet Dr. Imogen Coe, PhD, Dean Faculty of Science at Ryerson University

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Dr. Imogen Coe is an accomplished, award-winning Canadian biologist. Her 15 years of research into membrane protein cell biology and biochemistry is recognized worldwide.

In 2012, Coe was appointed Dean of Science at Ryerson University in Toronto, a five year position. Prior to that, she was the Associate dean for Research, in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at York University.

Dr. Coe completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Exeter in the UK and her graduate work at the University of Victoria. She attended the University of California and then the University of Alberta as a postdoctoral fellow.

Dean Coe is a leading advocate for Women in STEM. More

11 May 2015
Mathematics, STEM Spark, Technology

#STEMSpark: Meet Beatrice Worsley, Our First Female Computer Scientist

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Photo courtesy of  Women in Computing, Cambridge University

Beatrice “Trixie” Worsley of Toronto has just been recognized with an inaugural Lifetime Achievement in Computer Science Award by the Canadian Association of Computer Science.

Yet, few people in Canada have heard of her.

According to her biographer and champion, Scott M. Campbell of the University of Waterloo, Trixie Worsley “was a pioneering computer scientist and the first female in Canada to make significant contributions to the field.”

The FIRST woman computer scientist in Canada- and few people know her name?

Maybe it’s just a case of nice girls don’t make history. After all, according to Professor Campbell, Worsley did have a quiet and accommodating character.

Then, again, she died young in 1972 before people began to think about the history of computing. More

08 Apr 2015
Engineering, STEM Spark

#STEMSpark: Meet Malika Meghjani, Roboticist and Anita Borg Fellow

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It was an actual spark of electricity that sparked the interest of Montreal resident Malika Meghjani in a STEM career. Meghjani was curious about how electricity from an outlet can be transformed into numbers, ones and zeroes, that lead to life-like images on a screen. “I found it exciting”, says the 29 year old PhD student, “to see how electricity is transformed into something so beautiful.”

The native of India went on to study electrical engineering at Osmania University in her home town of Hyderabad just so she could learn all about transistors, capacitors and the other mechanisms that make a computer work. Still, while completing her undergraduate degree, she felt there was something missing. She wanted to see things move!

That’s why she can be found today in Montreal, specifically at the Center for Intelligent Machines (CIM) at McGill University, working on a PhD in the future-gazing field of robotics.

At McGill, Meghjani works with “an amazing and supportive team” and a terrific supervisor, Prof. Gregory Dudek, on a long-standing project to design multi-robot systems to help scientists study marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs. More

27 Mar 2015
Science, STEM Spark
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#STEMSpark: Meet Geologist Suzanne Karajaberlian, Sparked by Concern for the Environment

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Brand new Canadian citizen Suzanne Karajaberlian would never have guessed, years ago, how far her passion for geology would take her. All she knew was that a good education would provide her with a ticket to a better life, doing something interesting, probably somewhere else.

Back then, her parents never questioned her decision to go into a STEM field. They valued education and hoped it would secure a better, safer, future for all of their children.

Suzanne was born in Beirut, Lebanon and grew up there during the 80’s, the civil war years.  Geology, to her, wasn’t merely an intriguing field; it was an area of endeavor that would present her with many different career options. As she explained, “Geology isn’t just about rocks and earthquakes. It’s about the universe and its evolution.”

It never once crossed her mind that geology was a ‘male’ field, at least until she got to university to find that there were only 6 women in her class of 20. More

01 Mar 2015
Science, STEM Spark
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SPARKED BY SOCIAL JUSTICE -Octavia Grace Ritchie England

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Much has been written about the first women doctors of Canada, and especially Ontario’s Emily Howard Stowe, the first woman to practice medicine in Canada, and her daughter August Stowe Gullen, Canada’s female first medical school graduate.

In fact, Maclean’s magazine did a feature on Stowe and Canada’s women doctors way back in 1910. The pioneer feminist rose to fame in Canada in the 1970’s as this Google ngram clearly reveals. More