Introductions Necessary

An advocate for women in STEM fields, Natalie Panek is a program advisor and mentor for Cybermentor, an online mentoring program for girls in grades 6 to 12 in Alberta, Canada along with being a systems engineer for space robots at MDA Space. Image Courtesy of @nmpanek on Instagram. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

The inspiration for the novel Contact and its subsequent film, Dr. Jill Tarter has spent over 35 years searching the vast universe for evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence. Image: Victor R. Ruiz (CC BY 2.0). Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Dr. Fabiola Gianotti has been a leader at CERN since the 1990's, and is serving as their Director-General until 2025. Image: ATLAS Experiment at CERN (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

A professor of mathematics at Stanford University, Dr. Maryam Mirzakhani was one of the leading researchers in the field of complex geodesics and their closures in moduli space. Image: Maryeraud9/Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

An explorer and treasure hunter at heart, Sue Hendrickson has been a diver, amber miner, paleontologist, and conservationist just to name a few of her career's explorations. You may have heard of her namesake, a T-Rex named Sue. Image Courtesy of the Field Museum. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

The first woman to be selected by the Association for Advancement of Invention and Innovations as the National Inventor of the year, Barbara Askins was a chemist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Image: NASA/Wikimedia. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

The first American women to earn a degree in dentistry had to forge her own path to achieve this goal. Dr. Lucy Hobbs Taylor would in turn fight for the rights of other women to achieve their dreams. Image: Wikimedia. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Engineer Mary Golda Ross once offered this advice: “To function efficiently in today’s world, you need math. The world is so technical, if you plan to work in it, a math background will let you go farther and faster.” Image via The Museum of Women Pilots. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service, a program credited with lowering the infant mortality rate in Leslie County, Kentucky from one of the highest in the nation to below the national average Mary Carson Breckinridge turned her own personal tragedy into a lasting legacy that still serves southeastern Kentucky with four rural health clinics, a hospital, and a home health agency. Image via the National Library of Medicine. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Inspired at an early age to become a chemist, Dr. Lydia Villa-Komaroff’s scientific work in molecular biology has fundamentally changed the treatment of diabetes. Image: Anthony L. Komaroff (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

August 6th marks the anniversary of the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory that deployed the rover Curiosity onto the surface of the red planet. Because of the thin atmosphere present, the design of the landing system had to rely on a combination of rockets and a parachute. The team that designed the supersonic parachute used on this mission was led by Dr. Anita Sengupta. Image Via Dr. Anita Sengupta (Facebook) Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

With research contributions in the areas of multi-spectral research on x-ray and gamma ray sources, space-borne instrumentation, and observational and experimental astrophysics Dr. France A. Córdova has been a leader in both academia and public service in the sciences since being inspired by the moon landings. Image: National Science Foundation. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

While much of Dr. Eleanor Baum’s career has been in academia. she also has worked in the aerospace engineering and has been a consultant involved with the practical side of other electrical engineering pursuits as well. Image Courtesy of Cooper Union Alumni Association. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Rosalind Fox says that working at John Deere provides her with a sense of pride because her work has a higher purpose in that the company’s efforts support the growing global demand for food, shelter and roads. Image via LinkedIn. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Dr. Edith Widder is an oceanographer, bioluminescence expert, a certified scientific research pilot for Atmospheric Diving Systems, and an inventor. Image: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0). Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

In her first year of working at the New York City’s Department of Health diagnostic laboratory, Dr. Anna Wessels Williams would change the world. Image: Changing the Face of Medicine. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Today meet the woman who invented the thread that is used to make Kevlar, Stephanie Kwolek. Image: Chemical Heritage Foundation (CC BY-SA 3.0). Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Becoming one of MIT’s youngest full professors at the age of 35, Jackie Yi-Ru Ying is one of the world’s leading experts on nanotechnology. Image via NanoBio Lab. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Dr. Betty Harris has been a teacher and researcher since earning her BS in chemistry at the age of 19. Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms

Before she was enthralling children with tales of a mischievous rabbit Beatrix Potter was delving deep into the world of mycology. Image: Wikimedia. Sources and additional reading are available at https://introductionsnecessary.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ninehourfilms