Audrey Tang
A Taiwanese open-source programmer and digital democracy advocate whose non-linear path led from self-directed learning to public-sector technology leadership.
Stories
Role Models & Stories
Explore real paths into STEM and IT through people with different backgrounds, experiences, and challenges. Each story highlights not only achievements, but also the personal journeys, turning points, and perspectives behind them.
Chieko Asakawa
A blind Japanese computer scientist whose accessibility research helped make the web and physical navigation more usable for blind people.
Christiane Floyd
A pioneer of user-oriented software development and the first woman to become a computer science professor in the German-speaking world.
Claudia Eckert
A leading cybersecurity researcher in Germany whose work focuses on trustworthy systems, secure infrastructures, and the social importance of digital trust.
Ellen Ochoa
An engineer, inventor, astronaut, and NASA leader who became the first Hispanic woman in space and later directed Johnson Space Center.
Fei-Fei Li
A Chinese-born AI researcher whose path from immigrant student to Stanford professor helped shape modern computer vision through ImageNet and human-centered AI.
Hedy Lamarr
An Austrian-born inventor and actress whose co-invention of frequency-hopping technology became part of the story behind modern wireless communication.
Joy Buolamwini
A computer scientist and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League who exposed racial and gender bias in facial-analysis systems.
Katharina Zweig
A computer scientist who connects AI, algorithms, society, and public education through socioinformatics and algorithm accountability.
Katherine Johnson
A Black mathematician at NASA whose trajectory calculations supported major U.S. space missions and became a symbol of hidden contributions in STEM.
Kimberly Bryant
An African American electrical engineer who founded Black Girls Code to create more welcoming pathways into technology for Black girls and girls of color.
Lynn Conway
A pioneering computer engineer and trans woman whose work helped transform modern chip design after she rebuilt her career following discrimination.
Monika Henzinger
A leading theoretical computer scientist whose career spans dynamic algorithms, privacy, patents, major research institutions, and industry leadership.
Özlem Türeci
A German physician-scientist and BioNTech co-founder whose work connects cancer immunotherapy, mRNA technology, entrepreneurship, and migration background.
Solange Ghernaouti
A cybersecurity expert and professor whose career helped establish cybersecurity research and public debate around cyberpower, cybercrime, and digital sovereignty.
Sundar Pichai
An Indian-born engineer and product leader whose path from Chennai to Google shows how technical careers can grow through education, product thinking, and calm leadership.
Tanja Stadler
A mathematician and computational biologist whose work connects algorithms, evolution, genomics, and public-health decision-making.
Timnit Gebru
An Ethiopian-Eritrean computer scientist whose work on algorithmic bias and power structures helped make AI ethics a central public issue.
Tu Youyou
A Chinese scientist whose work on artemisinin led to a major malaria treatment and made her the first Chinese woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.