Australia has a rich history of achievement in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), having produced Nobel Prize winners, life-saving medical innovations, world-famous patents: and Australia’s women have played a major role in our STEM success, with Elizabeth Blackburn (and her US partners Carol Greider and Jack Szostak) creating a new field of science through their 2009 Nobel Prize winning discovery.

Perth’s Dr Fiona Wood developed spray-on skin in her treatment of the victims of the 2002 Bali Bombings. Former geologist Dr Megan Clarke ran our own research organization CSIRO for six years before this year joining the board of Rio Tinto. And of course there was Dorothy Hill, the first female professor at an Australian university – who was flying the STEM flag in her field of geology.

The STEM fields are not just the domain of men, as these women have shown. We all know that gender has nothing to do with brains, curiosity or hard work. We’ve found a few more inspirational women in STEM to prove it. These women have taken their technical skills and applied them in creative ways to communicate with others and to satiate that drive for knowledge.

Science

Dr Marguerite Evans-Galea is an award-winning biomedical researcher with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and is strongly committed to improving the state of science in Australia. She is co-founder of Women in Science Australia; and serves on the Science in Australia Gender Equity Forum with the Australian Academy of Science, and the Australian Science and Innovation Forum with the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

Dr Tanya Hill is the Astronomy curator at Melbourne Planetarium where she develops shows for school students and the public. Her shows are screened in 16 countries. She writes for The Conversation, teaching us all about supermassive black holes and the Philae lander, in exciting ways that we can actually understand. She says she got into astronomy ‘to better understand the universe.’

Technology

Dr Maia Sauren is a biomedical engineer-turned-software consultant who, via Open Knowledge Australia, established HealthHack in Sydney and Melbourne, bringing together software programmers and medical researchers to develop new ways of managing research results and patient information. The recent HealthHack produced applications including a real-time epilepsy seizure tracker, a tool for studying addictive gambling behavior, research grant data visualization tools and efficient ways of reading enormous laboratory data – among many others. Maia also works with projects using OpenMRS, a free open source medical records system for the developing world

Nicole Stark is co-director of Disparity Games which she formed with her husband and daughter. As well as producing the art, animation and audio on their games, she also handles business management and marketing. Disparity Games runs workshops in partnership with schools and Queensland University of Technology to teach game development to children and Nicole is actively involved in supporting women in the games industry. In October last year she held a panel at Australia’s biggest games expo Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) Australia on how gamers can be involved in political proactivism.

Engineering

Robotics engineer Marita Cheng was 2012 Young Australian of the Year. She founded Robogals, a group that runs robotics workshops, career talks and various other community activities to introduce young women to engineering. And now she runs robotics company 2Mar which has developed Jeva, an iPhone and iPad controlled robotic arm to assist people with limited upper mobility.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a mechanical engineer and currently works as an engineering specialist on oil and gas rigs. She is the founder of Youth Without Borders, where she acts as an advocate for the empowerment of youth, women and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Check out her fantastic TEDx presentation about unconscious bias and encouraging people to mentor others different to themselves. She has been recognised for a lot of her work with awards such as: 2007 Young Australian Muslim of the Year; 2010 and 2015 Young Queenslander of the Year; 2012 Young Leader in the Australian Financial Review; and Westpac’s inaugural 100 Women of Influence Awards.

Mathematics

Lily Serna is possibly best known for her extraordinary number manipulation skills as Maths host of SBS’s Letters and Numbers. She also co-hosted SBS’s Destination Flavour with Adam Liaw and Renee Lim in addition to her professional career as a web analyst. Lily has written a puzzle book, volunteers with the Australian Conservation Foundation and is a regular speaker on the delights of science, encouraging numeracy in children.

So there you have it. Women can succeed in the lab, in the code, in the mine and in the numbers. Whether your passion is microbes, medicines or Mars, being interested in STEM doesn’t mean you have to be relegated to the back of the room. These women featured are intelligent, passionate and doing incredible things not only with their careers but in the public space. I bet there are many more out there in our schools and universities just waiting to claim their spots.

This week we also learned that Sydney-based educational start-up CoderFactory is offering a ‘Champions for Change’ scholarship to their 24-week accelerated program to a female technologist. Why?

“Our modern world is lacking a visionary female technologist. We want to do our part to change that.”

Applications close 7 March 2015.