Jul 3, 2021 Meet The World’s Most Influential Women Engineers Michael T. Nietzel Senior Contributor I am a former university president who writes about higher education.

Barbara Liskov (left), the 2008 ACM Turing Award winner and a professor of engineering at MIT ... [+]

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Dr. Barbara Liskov, Institute Professor of Engineering at MIT, has been ranked first in a new release identifying the most influential women engineers in the world. The list comes from Academic Influence, the academic rankings system that uses artificial intelligence to search massive databases and measure the impact of work by individuals in various fields.

Relying on machine-learning technology developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Academic Influence searches open-source data in two sources - Wikipedia and CrossRef - for papers, chapters, books, and citations to individuals worldwide.

Collectively, these databases contain billions of continuously updated data points about millions of individuals’ achievements. But the method yields more than just a popularity contest of the individuals who gain the most public mentions. It focuses on the intersection of name mentions and discipline mentions so that individuals are credited with “hits” only when their names also intersect with mentions of the professional fields in which they excel. When cumulated, these intersectional mentions constitute a person’s influence score. (More details about the ranking methodology can be found here.)

On June 23, in celebration of International Women in Engineering Day 2021, an annual recognition organized by the Women’s Engineering Society, Academic Influence announced its compilation of the 35 women making the greatest impact in engineering. Here’s some basic information about them. The top 10 women on the list, in order, were: • Barbara Liskov, Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Ruzena Bajcsy, University of California, Berkeley • Dina Katabi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Diane Greene, American entrepreneur • Jennifer Widom, • Barbara Oakley, Oakland University • Mae C. Jemison, physician, former and the first Black woman to travel into space • Adah Almutairi, University of California, Davis • Manuela M. Veloso, Carnegie Mellon University • Daniela L. Rus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Of the 35, almost three-quarters (26) of the women were employed in America, either in academic institutions, businesses or as entrepreneurs. Among universities, MIT led the list with four of the women holding position there (Dina Katabi, Barbara Liskov, Dava Newman, and Daniela Rus).

Two of the women - Barbara Oakley and Jennifer Widom - have been pioneers in the development of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, the breakthrough in online education that’s given millions of students affordable access to a wide range of higher education content.

The influencers represent the full array of engineering sub- disciplines, including computer science, mechanical engineering, materials science, electrical engineering, chemical engineering and biomedical specialties.

Several have been CEOs of major technology companies, such as Ursula Burns the former CEO of Xerox; , who currently heads up Prodea Systems, prior to being the co-founder and CEO of Telecom Technologies; Diane Greene, who was CEO of Cloud as well as the founder of multiple tech companies; and Lisa Su, President and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices. They include winners of highly prestigious prizes such as Cal Tech’s Frances Arnold (Nobel Prize in ), Barbara Liskov (Turing Award), and Dina Katabi (named a MacArthur and recipient of the ACM Prize in Computing).

Many have been elected to membership in the most elite national academies such as the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A number of the influencers have led academic institutions, directed prominent nonprofit organizations or headed up federal agencies. For example, Gilda Barabino is the president of the Olin College of Engineering, where she is also a professor of biomedical and chemical engineering. Elizabeth Cannon is the former president of the University of Calgary.

Wanda Austin was CEO of The Aerospace Corporation.

• Arati Prabhakar headed two major government agencies - DARPA, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Nominated by President Barack Obama, Dava Newman served as Deputy Administrator of NASA.

While many of those on the list have helped blaze the trail for women to enter and flourish in engineering and other STEM fields, one in particular deserves special mention for her work in this area. It’s Dawn Bonfield, of Aston University in Birmingham, England. Bonfield is the founder and director of Towards Vision, a company that works for greater diversity and inclusion in engineering. She is also past president of the Women's Engineering Society. Commenting on the new list, Jed Macosko, President of Academic Influence and professor of at Wake Forest University, said, "Engineering has a reputation as a mostly male profession.

We want to set the record straight and let more people know that women engineers are not only growing in number but also are driving the field forward in new and creative ways. They bring innovative thinking and bold solutions that make their profession better, and more people need to know who they are and see why they are the vanguard of a new era in engineering."

Michael T. Nietzel https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/07/03/meet-the-worlds-most-influential- women-engineers/?sh=4454482e34c0&utm_source=NAE+Spotlight&utm_campaign=80180e5dc6- EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_30_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b3cbbfaea- 80180e5dc6-246063637 Highly Influential Women in Engineering Today From pioneers in engineering sub-disciplines like computer science and electrical engineering to the newest generation of revolutionary thinkers in areas like nano-medicine and nuclear power, these 35 female engineers showcase the brilliant minds driving today’s leading-edge innovations, developing tomorrow’s life-saving discoveries, and generally taking us to thrilling new heights of scientific understanding.

Women have made important gains in engineering professions over the last several decades. According to Census reporting, just 3% of engineering professionals were women in 1970. By 2019, that number had quintupled to 15%, a significant gain but one that suggests a field still dramatically tilted toward opportunities for men. This makes the ground-breaking achievements of the women on our list all the more remarkable. From pioneers in engineering sub-disciplines like computer science and electrical engineering to the newest generation of revolutionary thinkers in areas like nano- medicine and nuclear powers, these 35 influential women engineers showcase the brilliant minds driving today’s leading-edge innovations, developing tomorrow’s life-saving discoveries, and generally taking us to thrilling new heights of scientific understanding. While the Census figures show how far we’ve come, the data also show that there is still a great deal of work to be done in advancing equal representation in engineering. To this end, let the women on this list be an inspiration to the next generation of analysts, innovators, and influencers.

35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering 2000-2020

• Adah Almutairi

1976 - Present (45 years)

#13416 Person’s Overall Influence

Adah Almutairi is a scholar, inventor, and entrepreneur. Almutairi is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry; affiliate faculty in the departments of Bioengineering and NanoEngineering; and Director of the Center for Excellence in Nanomedicine and Engineering in the Institute of Engineering in Medicine at the University of California, San Diego . Her work focuses on nanomedicine, nanotechnology, chemistry and polymer science. Almutairi is a 2016 Kavli Fellow and has received numerous honors and awards such as the NIH director’s new innovator award in 2009 for her work on “Chemically Amplified Response Strategies for Medical Sciences”. Almutairi holds over a dozen U.S. and International patents, many of which are currently licensed in Industry. Almutairi is the Founder of eLux Medical Inc

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1. Rose Amal

1965 - Present (56 years)

#165378 Person's Overall Influence

Rose Amal is the Scientia Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow and director of the Particles and Catalysis Research Group in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of New South Wales. She earned a bachelor of engineering degree in chemical engineering and a Ph.D in chemical engineering from the University of New South Wales. Her research has focused on the design and development of nanomaterials and systems for chemical and solar energy conversion.

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2. Anousheh Ansari

1966 - Present (55 years)

#9427 Person's Overall Influence

Anousheh Ansari is an Iranian American engineer and co- founder and chairwoman of Prodea Systems. Her previous business accomplishments include serving as co-founder and CEO of Telecom Technologies, Inc. . The Ansari family is also the title sponsor of the Ansari X Prize. On September 18, 2006, a few days after her 40th birthday, she became the first Iranian and first female Muslim in space. Ansari was the fourth overall self-funded space tourist, and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station. Her memoir, My Dream of Stars, co-written with Homer Hickam, was publishe...

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3. Kristi Anseth

1968 - Present (53 years)

#14658 Person's Overall Influence

Kristi S. Anseth is the Tisone Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, an Associate Professor of Surgery, and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her main research interests are the design of synthetic biomaterials using hydrogels, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.

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4. Frances Arnold

1956 - Present (65 years)

#3310 Person's Overall Influence Frances Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biochemistry for the California Institute of Technology. She earned a B.S. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University and an M.S. and Ph.D in chemical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. She earned a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of methods of using directed evolution to facilitate enzyme development.

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5. Wanda Austin

1954 - Present (67 years)

#19712 Person's Overall Influence

Wanda M. Austin is a former president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, a leading architect for the nation’s national security space programs. She was both the first woman, and the first African-American, to hold this position. The Aerospace Corporation has nearly 3,600 employees and annual revenues of more than $917 million. Austin assumed this position on January 1, 2008, and retired on October 1, 2016. She continues as a consultant for the corporation.

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6. Ruzena Bajcsy

1933 - Present (88 years)

#10688 Person's Overall Influence

Ruzena Bajcsy is an American engineer and computer scientist who specializes in robotics. She is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also Director Emerita of CITRIS.

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7. Gilda A Barabino

1956 - Present (65 years)

#16809 Person's Overall Influence

Gilda A. Barabino is the president of the Olin College of Engineering, where she is also a Professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering. Previously, she served as the Dean of The Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York, and as a professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering and the CUNY School of Medicine.

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8. Dawn Bonfield

#23672 Person's Overall Influence

Dawn Bonfield currently holds the titles of Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University, as well as Director of Engineering Equality Diversity and Inclusion at Aston University. Bonfield is also a past president and chief executive of the Women’s Engineering Society.

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9.

Ursula Burns

1958 - Present (63 years)

#18107 Person's Overall Influence

Ursula M. Burns , is an American businesswoman. She was the chair and CEO of VEON from late 2018 to early 2020, a senior advisor to Teneo, and a non-executive director of Diageo since April 2018. She is a member of the board of directors of Uber. In 2009, Burns became CEO of Xerox, the first among black women to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and the first woman to succeed another as head of a Fortune 500 company. Burns served as CEO of Xerox from 2009 to 2016 and Xerox chairwoman from 2010 to 2017. In 2014, Forbes rated her the 22nd most powerful woman in the world. Among other civic posi...

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10. M. Elizabeth Cannon

#17178 Person's Overall Influence

Elizabeth Cannon is a Canadian engineer specializing in geomatics engineering and president Emerita of the University of Calgary. From 2010 to 2018, she served as the university's eighth president and vice-chancellor, the first alumna to hold that position.

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11. Marita Cheng

1989 - Present (32 years)

#35963 Person's Overall Influence

Marita Cheng is the founder of Robogals. She was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year. She is the founder and current CEO of Aubot, a start-up robotics company. She co-founded Aipoly, an app to assist blind people to recognise objects using their mobile phones. She was named as one of the World's Top 50 women in Technology by Forbes in 2018, and was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2016.

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12. Leslie Dewan

1984 - Present (37 years)

#320110 Person's Overall Influence

Leslie Dewan is an American nuclear engineer. She was the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Transatomic Power. Dr. Dewan is a member of the board of MIT and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

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13. Ann Dowling

1952 - Present (69 years)

#58203 Person's Overall Influence

Ann Dowling is a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and professor of mechanical engineering at the . She studied at the University of Cambridge where she earned a Ph.D degree.

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14. Mica Endsley

#104395 Person's Overall Influence

Mica Endsley is an engineer and a former Chief Scientist of the United States Air Force. The position of the Chief Scientist was created over 60 years ago to provide independent scientific advice to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, as well as to its senior leadership. In this role, she worked with the top scientists and engineers within the Air Force as well as in academia, industry, and the other armed services to ensure that the Air Force's research and development efforts remain relevant and effective. Additionally, as the Chief Scientist she responded

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15. Lynn Gladden

1961 - Present (60 years)

#62056 Person's Overall Influence

Lynn Gladden is the Shell Professor of Chemical Engineering for the University of Cambridge, as well as executive chair at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She earned a B.S. in chemical physics from the and a Ph.D in physical chemistry from the University of Cambridge. She went on to conduct postgraduate studies in physics at the .

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16. Diane Greene

1955 - Present (66 years)

#71221 Person's Overall Influence

Diane B. Greene is an American technology entrepreneur and executive. Greene started her career as a naval architect before transitioning to the tech industry, where she was a founder and the CEO of VMware from 1998 until 2008. She later served on the board of Alphabet and as the CEO of Google Cloud from 2015 until early 2019. She also co-founded and was CEO of two startups, Bebop and VXtreme, which were acquired by Google and , respectively.

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17. Helen Greiner

1967 - Present (54 years)

#58058 Person's Overall Influence

Helen Greiner is a co-founder of iRobot and former CTO of Aria Insights, Inc. , a start-up company specializing in small multi-rotor drones for the consumer, commercial and military markets.

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18. Mae C. Jemison

1956 - Present (65 years)

#9411 Person's Overall Influence

Mae Carol Jemison is an American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She became the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Endeavour. Jemison joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve for the STS-47 mission, during which she orbited the Earth for nearly eight days on September 12–20, 1992.

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19. Dina Katabi

1970 - Present (51 years)

#111264 Person's Overall Influence

Dina Katabi is the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and the director of the MIT Wireless Center.

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20.

1967 - Present (54 years)

#94128 Person's Overall Influence

Lydia E. Kavraki is a Greek-American computer scientist, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science, a professor of bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering at Rice University. She is also the director of the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University. She is known for her work on robotics/AI and bioinformatics/computational biology and in particular for the probabilistic roadmap method for robot motion planning and biomolecular configuration analysis.

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21. Barbara Liskov

1939 - Present (82 years)

#19358 Person's Overall Influence

Liskov (née Barbara Huberman) is a computer scientist at MIT, where she is Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Institute Professor in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), where she leads the Programming Methodology Group. One of the first women in the US to earn a PhD in computer science, Liskov was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the eldest of four siblings. In 2008, she won the Turing Award for her invention of the Liskov substitution principle, one of only three women to win that award so far...

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22. Sandra Magnus 1964 - Present (57 years)

#52044 Person's Overall Influence

Sandra Hall Magnus is an American engineer and a former NASA astronaut. She returned to Earth with the crew of STS-119 Discovery on March 28, 2009, after having spent 134 days in orbit. She was assigned to the crew of STS-135, the final mission of the Space Shuttle. She is also a licensed amateur radio operator with the call sign KE5FYE. From 2012 until 2018 Magnus was the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

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23. Radhika Nagpal #17453 Person's Overall Influence Radhika Nagpal is an American computer scientist and researcher in the fields of self-organising computer systems, biologically-inspired robotics, and biological multi-agent systems. She is the Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She is also a Core Faculty Member of the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In 2017, Nagpal co-founded a robotics company under the name of Root Robotics. This educational company works to create many different opportunities for those unable to code to lea...

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24. Dava Newman

1964 - Present (57 years)

#63331 Person's Overall Influence

Dava J. Newman is a former Deputy Administrator of NASA, Newman earned her Ph.D. in aerospace biomedical engineering, and Master of Science degrees in aerospace engineering and technology and policy all from MIT, and her Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member in Cambridge, MA. She is also a MacVicar Faculty Fellow , former Director of the Tec

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25. Barbara Oakley

1955 - Present (66 years)

#20178 Person's Overall Influence

Barbara Ann Oakley is an American Professor of Engineering at Oakland University and McMaster University whose online courses on learning are some of the most popular MOOC classes in the world. She is involved in multiple areas of research, ranging from STEM education, to engineering education, to learning practices.

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26. Arati Prabhakar 1959 - Present (62 years) #8301 Person's Overall Influence Arati Prabhakar is an American engineer and the former head of DARPA, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a position she held from July 30, 2012 to January 20, 2017.

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27. Daniela L. Rus

1963 - Present (58 years)

#148047 Person's Overall Influence

Daniela L. Rus is a Romanian-American roboticist, the Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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28. Lisa Su

1969 - Present (52 years)

#57693 Person's Overall Influence

Lisa Su is a Taiwanese-born American business executive and electrical engineer, who is the chief executive officer and president of Advanced Micro Devices. Early in her career, Su worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale Semiconductor in engineering and management positions. She is known for her work developing silicon-on-insulator semiconductor manufacturing technologies and more efficient semiconductor chips during her time as vice president of IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center.

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29. Tessy Thomas 1963 - Present (58 years) #18721 Person's Overall Influence Tessy Thomas is an Indian scientist and Director General of Aeronautical Systems and the former Project Director for Agni-IV missile in Defence Research and Development Organisation. She is the first woman scientist to head a missile project in India.

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30. Manuela M. Veloso

1957 - Present (64 years)

#272092 Person's Overall Influence

Veloso is Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Lisbon, Portugal, at the prestigious Instituto Superior Técnico. She received her Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Veloso also holds the title of Head of AI Research at J.P. Morgan Bank.

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31. Padmasree Warrior 1961 - Present (60 years) #10686 Person's Overall Influence Padmasree Warrior is the Founder, CEO and President of Fable Group Inc., a curated reading platform focused on mental wellness. She also serves on the board of directors of Microsoft and Spotify.

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32. Jennifer Widom

#31244 Person's Overall Influence

Jennifer Widom is the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the Stanford School of Engineering and the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and professor in the Stanford Department of Electrical Engineering. She was the chair of the computer science department from 2009 to 2014, and served as a senior associate dean from 2014 to 2016. In February 2017 she was named Dean of the School of Engineering. In 2015, ACM conferred her with the ACM-W Athena Lecturer Award to honor prominent women Computer Scientists for the introduction of fundamental concepts and architectures of active database syst...

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33. Stephanie Wilson

1966 - Present (55 years)

#91171 Person's Overall Influence

Stephanie Diana Wilson is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew to space onboard three Space Shuttle missions, and is the second African American woman to go into space, after . Her 42 days in space are the most of any African American astronaut, male or female.

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• Jackie Yi-Ru Ying

1966 - Present (55 years)

#20524 Person’s Overall Influence

Jackie Yi-Ru Ying is an American nanotechnology scientist and the founding executive director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore.

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Ranked by Influence

1. Barbara Liskov 2. Ruzena Bajcsy 3. Dina Katabi 4. Diana Greene 5. Jennifer Widom 6. Barbara Oakley 7. Mae C. Jemison 8. Adah Almutairi 9. Manuela M. Veloso 10. Daniela L. Rus 11. Ursula Burns 12. Frances Arnold 13. Lydia Kavraki 14. Tessy Thomas 15. Arati Prabhakar 16. Jackie Yi-Ru Ying 17. Sandra Magnus 18. Radhika Nagpal 19. Wanda Austin 20. Stephanie Wilson 21. Mica Endsley 22. Dava Newman 23. Anousheh Ansari 24. M. Elizabeth Cannon 25. Ann Dowling 26. Lisa Su 27. Lynn Gladden 28. Kristi Anseth 29. Marita Cheng 30. Helen Greiner 31. Leslie Dewan 32. Rose Amal 33. Padmasree Warrior 34. Dawn Bonfield 35. Gilda Barabino https://academicinfluence.com/rankings/people/influential-women-engineers