Tag: adalovelace

Thank you Dr. Caroline Haythornthwaite

Leigh Graves Wolf

Last year for Ada Lovelace day I wrote about Dr. Catherine Mohr.  This year, I would like to thank the forward thinking Dr. Caroline Haythornthwaite.  Dr. Haythornthwaite is currently the Director of the School of Library, Archival & Information Studies at University of British Columbia.

(Creative Commons Image courtesy of estzer on Flickr)

I first learned about Dr. Haythornthwaite’s work when I took a social network analysis course. In the course we read selections from The Internet in Everyday Life.  You can find a recent list of her publications on her website: http://haythorn.wordpress.com/publications/

I highly encourage you to take some time to look at her “Recent Activities” and “Teaching” pages. Her work in pushing the field of social network analysis and social informatics is truly groundbreaking and inspirational.

——————————————————————

You too can contribue to Ada Lovelace Day!

Just follow these three simple steps:

  1. Create content about a woman in STEM that you admire. Write a blog post, record a podcast, make a video, draw a comic. What you do doesn’t matter, so long as it’s publicly available and has a URL.
  2. Log in to your account here on FindingAda.com.
  3. Add the URL to your content to our directory.

Thank you Dr. Catherine Mohr

Leigh Graves Wolf

In searching for my woman to honor for Ada Lovelace Day, I started with TED – a place I often go for inspiration.  I clicked on “Show Talks Related to Technology” on the left navigation.  I was a little bummed when only one (albeit awesome) woman showed up on the auto generated spotlight links.  Undeterred, I searched for technology in the main TED site search.  About 3 pages in on the search I ran across a talk with the following title “Catherine Mohr: Surgery’s past, present and robotic future” Having just gone through surgery last week, this title certainly piqued my interest.

Before watching her talk, I googled Dr. Mohr and found a recent article about her in the IEEE Spectrum Journal.  The minute I read the “What She Does” synopsis, I knew I had my woman for Ada Lovelace Day.  Dr. Catherine Mohr develops advanced tools and procedures for da Vinci surgical robots, helping to make surgery safer and less invasive. The da Vinci system was used to perform my surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.  It is the first (and last) thing I remember seeing when I was wheeled into the operating room before the anesthesia (or “margarita” as the anesthetist called it) kicked in.

Take a minute (well, 18 minutes and 55 seconds) to watch Dr. Mohr’s TED Talk.  If you’re super duper crunched for time, fast forward to the 17:00 mark, but, I hope you’re not crunched for time, it really is worth the watch over your morning coffee or lunch break.

Dr. Mohr, thank you for making me (and countless others) whole, intact, and functional enough to go out and save the world.