As a company founded by scientists, L'Oreal champions womeninscience and sustainable innovations grounded in science. Read more about our philanthropic and sustainability goals and the important role FWIS plays in achieving them in this interview with their Head of Sustainability and CSR!

The space was tiny and hot. On a fateful day last summer, Katie Bouman and three fellow researchers filed into a small room at Harvard University, safe from prying eyes, in order to see an image that had been years in the making. Researchers from all over the world had combined forces to gather masses of astronomical data - enough to fill a half ton of hard drives - that they hoped to turn into the world's first image of a black hole. In order to do that, the team needed algorithms that could distill all that noisy, messy information into one comprehensible picture. And Bouman, whose expertise is not in astrophysics but computer science, was one of a small group of people who spent years developing and testing those methods.

What do the first computer programmer, the patent holder for spread spectrum wireless communications, and the author of the first assembly language have in common? All were women, as are 34 percent of today’s web developers and 23 percent of programmers. Women have a long and storied involvement dating back to the first days of computer science, but there's still a great deal of room for improvement. In high school, less than 20 percent of AP computer science test takers are female, and that number holds steady at 18 percent for the number of computer and information sciences undergraduate degree recipients. Even at a workplace level, only 18 percent of CIO positions at Fortune 250 companies are held by women. There's good news, though: The gender pay gap for computer programmers is smaller than it is for other professional occupations, and startups led by women are more capital-efficient than the norm. In this infographic, datascience@berkeley explores the history and influence of women in computing, looking at some big names throughout the ages and then reviewing some sobering statistics about the current state of women in technology. Feel free to share, since as Karen Sparck Jones once said, ''Computing is too important to be left to men.''

Katharine Burr Blodgett was the first female scientist hired by General Electric. Her work was truly invisible, deliberately so.Physicist Katharine Burr Blodgett is a pioneer for women in science and an inspiration this Women's History Month. Today, variations of Blodgett's non-reflective glass invention is still used for eyeglasses, car windshields, and computer screens. Learn more about Katherine Burr Blodgett and her incredible contributions to science and society.

Scientists have proposed a variety of features that influence one's ability to remember things and solve problems. The biological basis for variations in human intelligence is not well understood, but research in neuroscience, psychology, and other fields has begun to yield insights into what may undergird such differences. One well-known hypothesis, backed by evidence from brain scans and studies of people with brain lesions, proposes that intelligence is seated in particular clusters of neurons in the brain, many of them located in the prefrontal and parietal cortices. Known as the fronto-parietal integration, the hypothesis holds that the structure of these areas, their activity, and the connections between them vary among individuals and correlate with performance on cognitive tasks.

The tech industry has proven time and time again that there's nowhere to go but up, and proof of this lies with the fact that some of the deserving heroes behind this growth are actually heroines. Women may not populate the industry as much as their male counterparts, but just stop a moment and take a look at all the awards and conferences out there now dedicated to women in tech and business. Women are stepping up to the challenge. Until the time comes when the industry offers all women equal opportunity and representation, the following six up-and-coming women are role models and evidence of female leaders making tech waves from multiple corners of the globe.

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word scientist? It's most likely an intelligent type wearing a white lab coat with round-rimmed glasses. And more than likely, you see the scientist as a male. Scientists in film and movies are typically no different than the character type you have in your head. However, sometimes the script calls for a slight spin on archetype. These are the best female scientists in film. Several different areas of science are represented on this list. There are anthropologists, forensic specialists, astrophysicists, biologists, archeologists, astrobiologists, and meteorologists. Some of the females on this list are real people, like Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist), who risked her life in order to save a rare species of mountain gorillas in Africa. Clara McMillen (Kinsey), a biologist, aided her husband’s ground-breaking research that ultimately linked science and sexual behavior. Most of the female characters on this list are fictional and their roles as scientists play a vital part in the narratives of the films they are in. Sure, everyone thinks of Peter Parker when The Amazing Spider-Man is mentioned. But what about Gwen Stacey? Without Stacey, Spider-Man could not have stopped Dr. Connors, and the fine people of New York City would have been turned into human lizards. It doesn’t matter whether these female scientists are trying to contact aliens or find the cure for a deadly monkey virus. Their dedication and intelligence is apparent all over the silver screen.

2018 Fellow of L'Oreal USA For Women in Science Dr. Amber Alhadeff recently chatted with the Philadelphia Inquirer about how her research is helping us understand how our brain controls our eating behavior. ''My own interest in science was prompted when I started running marathons more than 10 years ago. At the time, I realized how important what we eat is for performance. I realized how important what we eat is for a lot of human diseases. I became really interested in how the body controls what we eat.''

''Most of the successful programmers are male'' this is one of the many common misconceptions about programmers. Female programmers are often seen out of the spotlight and their contribution is less known to the world. Today we've decided to bring a list of top 10 female programmers whose contribution played a huge role in the field of computer science and information technology.

It's commonly thought that Nordic countries lead the way in gender equality in the world and Sweden especially can brag about having the highest score on gender equality within the European Union.This is due to a number of decade-long policies and efforts around raising social awareness, especially by highly engaged feminist activists.But it's also painfully obvious to anyone who works in tech in Sweden that this overall equality has not rubbed off on our industry.There are plenty of organizations that have taken upon them to do what they can to make tech more gender equal - TechEQ, Womengineer and DataTjej, to name a few .