Boolean Girl Events

Dr. Gretchen Hein teaches engineering classes at Michigan Technological University. Her classes are Thermodynamics (where energy goes), Fluid Mechanics (where water goes), and Heat Transfer (how stuff warms up and cools down).

She has three engineering degrees: a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, a Master’s in Civil Engineering, and a Doctorate in Environmental Engineering. This means that she enjoys engineering so much that she keeps exploring different types. Prior to teaching engineering, she worked for a company that made helicopter engines. She has not only designed parts of those engines, but she has also taken a helicopter engine apart and put it back together.

She is the Society of Women Engineers adviser at Michigan Tech, and advises, along with her SWE college members, a SWENext Club where the focus is on national science competitions.

Her family has a farm where they grow vegetables and fruit. They also have goats, sheep, alpacas, chickens, ducks, rabbits, dogs, cats and bees.

Monica Puerto is a Data Scientist who has worked with large media companies, such as National Geographic and Discovery Communications, in addition to startups and nonprofits. She holds a Master’s in Data Science from American University. She was a volunteer director for the DC Chapter of Women Who Code. An avid speaker on Data Science in the Washington, DC area, Monica is passionate about making technology more inclusive and diverse.

Stephanie Sanchez has a Master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of South Carolina. She earned an Associates’ degree in chemical engineering at the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Columbia before coming to the United States to complete her degree at Drew University.

She currently works as a Senior Staff Professional at Geosyntec Consultants a company that strives to keep our groundwater safe from chemical contamination. As a graduate research assistant, she worked on a study funded by the National Science Foundation on the discovery and design of catalytic materials that can be used to effectively convert biomass into useful chemicals.

Stephanie is a member of the Society of Women Engineers and she also volunteers as a FemStem day speaker!

Nadia Carlsten is Head of Product at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing. Nadia has spent the last decade bringing emerging technologies to market, working with product development teams in startups as well as large organizations innovating in quantum, cybersecurity, and machine learning. Using her expertise in deep tech and Open Innovation, she also advises industry and government organizations on technology investments and intellectual property commercialization. Prior to Amazon, she was Director of Commercialization at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security where she led innovation initiatives and managed a technology accelerator program that successfully launched several startups and brought new cybersecurity technologies to market.
She holds a Ph.D. in engineering from UC Berkeley and degrees in Chemistry and Physics from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Souto studies the processes that have shaped the evolution of life over millions of years. To do so, she integrates data from Zoology, Marine Biology, and Paleobiology. Her research is focused primarily on echinoderms, especially sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

Dr. Souto believes that Interpreting the complexities of life and evolution into simple yet awe-inspiring snippets of information can inspire current and future generations to become stewards of the environment. As an educator and leader, she is particularly motivated to inspire students and the public to think critically about our evolutionary history so that we can collectively improve the world.

Hope McIntyre is a Lead Software Engineer, Data Science, Machine Learning(ML)/Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Disney Streaming. Hope uses her engineering and data science background to implement machine learning solutions to deliver business impact. She is a big-picture thinker who loves writing code and training models, but who also finds joy in shaping a company’s long-term data strategy and advocating for ML and AI ideas to drive the future of the business.

“I could go by many names – data scientist, applied machine learning scientist, search engineer. It doesn’t matter what you call me, I am at my best when I am transforming large amounts of data into meaningful insights and delightful product features that generate wins for companies and their users.”

Research Geologist, Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution

Dr. Toscano is a coastal geologist, writer, and journal editor specializing in global climate changes and their impacts. Her research has focused on late Quaternary coastal studies, including Caribbean geology and oceanography, coral reef and mangrove environments, paleoclimatology, Pleistocene and Holocene sea-level change reconstructed from Caribbean fossil reefs and wetland deposits, modern sea level instrumental monitoring and analysis, and effects of predicted climate warming and rising sea levels on coastal systems, shallow marine ecosystems and coastal environmental management.

Dr. Duvall research at the Environmental Protection Agency focuses on measuring air pollutants in the ambient air and near sources, such as roadways and industrial facilities, using a variety of innovative equipment and approaches. Air pollutants can cause harmful impacts on human health and the environment so knowing the types of pollutants and how much of them are in the environment is important. The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. The science I conduct matters as it contributes to EPA’s important mission while also engaging the public in collecting data to better understand air quality.