These women are doing amazing things with 3D technology

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Whether it’s Adele dedicating her Grammy to Beyoncé, the Swedish women’s national football team sporting words of inspiration on their kits or Lego giving the go-ahead on a new women of NASA play set, female empowerment and cheering on our sisters, is everywhere. So as it’s International Women’s Day, I decided I would offer my own words of empowerment by highlighting some of the great things women in the 3D printing industry are doing right now.

Though there are lots of women in our industry (In the TCT office alone, over half of our staff are female), in the majority of cases the number of women compared to that of men follows the trend for most industrial sectors - you won't be shocked to hear, it's very low. According to recent statistics, women make up less than 10% of the engineering workforce but in contrast, account for around half of enrolments onto STEM courses at university level. Initiatives such as Mind the Gap and the STEM Ambassador programme are working to change those statistics and promote opportunities for women in STEM and we’re going to need a lot if the industry is to fill the 140,000 plus roles that are expected to be created in the sector before 2023. Just look around any trade show you go to and you will see there is still a long way to go.

But change is happening and thankfully, you don't have to look too far to find amazing role models everywhere in this great industry of ours. Below is just a small snapshot of those women already working in the field, leading pioneering research and founding startups that are making a real difference to this industry and our world as a whole. It is by no means an extensive list, it would be impossible to cram every single worthy maker, thinker and innovator into a single roundup (though I would love to!) so feel free to add your own in the comments below and get involved in the conversation on Twitter.

Automotive

Ellen Lee, Technical Leader for Additive Manufacturing Research at Ford

Ellen Lee has been at the helm of Ford’s additive manufacturing (AM) activity since 2015 after the automotive giant assembled a research programme dedicated to testing out new technologies and materials. Pushing the limits of AM in automotive production, the team was one of the first big names on Carbon’s CLIP technology beta programme before it launched last year and most recently, Lee has overseen the installation of Stratasys’ Infinite Build platform at its Research and Innovation Centre in Dearborn, Michigan which enables the manufacture of large-scale parts. As Technical Leader, Lee's role centres on creating a research programme into AM materials and processes for automotive applications. In an interview with TCT in 2015, Lee said: “A lot of things we do certain ways because that’s what our processes allow us to do. If we think outside the box, there may be many more efficient ways to do things and that’s what we’re really trying to look for.”

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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.

Healthcare

Nina Tandon, CEO and Co-founder at Epibone

Appearing on the front cover of WIRED UK this month in a mock up of what an edition of the magazine cover will look like in five years time, Nina Tandon is pioneering the development of personalised bone implants through innovative use of 3D technology and stem cell fabrication. Tandon and her team at New York-based start-up, EpiBone are using 3D fabrication to ‘grow human bones’ derived from stem cells from a patient’s own tissue. Starting with a CT scan to map the defect, the team create a scaffold using protein from animal bones or synthetic materials and take a fat sample from the patient to isolate the cells. This is then put into a bioreactor to create an environment for the cells to cultivate and grow into the scaffold to create a mature piece of bone. Right now EpiBone is focussing on creating small pieces of bone and trialling in animals before it can be used in humans but as development continues, they hope to take this to the market in the next 5 or 6 years and make congenital defects a thing of the past.

Electronics and Functionality

Jennifer Lewis, Professor at Harvard and Co-founder of Voxel8

Prof. Jennifer Lewis, Sc.D. MIT, is a Professor at the Harvard Wyss Institute and heads up the Lewis Lab, which is focussed on 3D printing with soft functional materials for use in everything from electronics to tissue engineering. An internationally recognised scientist, Lewis is also the founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Voxel8, a startup which was born straight out of the Lewis Lab to develop multi-material digital manufacturing solutions for electronics, mixed gradient and other functional, high-performance products. In our extensive global conference series, Lewis’s talk at the CES 3D Printing Conference in 2016 was one of my favourites so far thanks to her accessible way of demonstrating how and why Voxel8’s complex research makes for truly groundbreaking technology - watch it here.

Space

Julielynn Wong, MD, MPH, Founder and CEO at 3D4MD

Harvard educated physician-scientist, Julielynn Wong founded 3D4MD in 2011 to solve big healthcare problems in some of the world’s most challenging environments. Using technologies such as 3D printing and drones, 3D4MD seeks to build a library of crowd-sourced, sustainable solutions for those who need them most. But Wong’s research goes much further than this humble planet of ours and has transpired to the international space station where 3D4MD is creating medical resources for use in space which in January saw the first medical device 3D printed onboard the space station in partnership with Made in Space. If Elon Musk’s predictions come true and we find ourselves living on the red planet in less than a decade, this technology could not only reduce the current risks associated with illness for astronauts on a mission, but also shape the future of off-earth healthcare.

Consumer Products

Lucy Beard, CEO at Feetz

3D printing and footwear are a natural fit and we have seen several applications of the technology in everything from Reebok’s Liquid Factory concept to the manufacture of custom orthopaedic insoles. Feetz was founded by Lucy Beard who, after struggling to find shoes that fit, wondered if it could be possible to order shoes like you order a cup of coffee. Using a consumer-friendly process and scanning technology, Feetz specialises in creating custom shoes that are completely unique to the wearer. Just last week, the company made a pair of custom shoes for Broc Brown, the tallest teenager in the world after he struggled to find shoes that fit properly. Using Feetz technology, Broc was able to size his feet using their SizeMe app to capture 5000 data points in seconds that measures 22 dimensions across your feet, and has the freedom to choose the colour and style he wanted. Broc’s shoes took 30 hours to print and were finished within two weeks before being personally delivered by Beard to his home in Michigan.