Do you or someone you know deserve recognition for impactful work within STEM education? Nominate them for a STEM Inspiration Award today! Applications are now open for the 2018 STEM Inspiration Awards, giving professionals involved in STEM education the opportunity to be recognised for their inspiring work. The annual event is a chance for individuals and organisations from across the STEM education sector to really shine. From technicians, educators, STEM Ambassadors, employers and more, the STEM Inspiration Awards acknowledge those who inspire the younger generation in STEM subjects. Shortlisted nominees will be invited to attend an exclusive award ceremony at the Houses of Parliament in London. Make sure to nominate your outstanding colleagues, schools, partners or yourself before applications close 14 September.

It's no secret that the tech industry has never exactly led the way when it comes to gender equality in the workplace. Traditionally a male-dominated world, tech fields are slowly becoming a more feasible option for women, thanks to the increasing visibility and representation of women in the industry. Coupled with the social movement pushing for uniform pay and more equal treatment of women in STEM, things are beginning to move in the right direction, but how close are we really to gender parity in tech? According to a new survey by niche tech recruiters Anderson Frank, while the number of women working in the tech sector is slowly increasing, there's still a ways to go when it comes to board-level representation and wage equality. Compiled from over 10,000 data points, including survey responses from people working in the business software channel and job placement data from the last 12 months, Anderson Frank's salary survey reveals a large percentage of tech workers are not seeing gender equality in their workplaces.

Science has a sexual harassment problem. From the most polished ivory tower to the local community college, harassment pervades lecture halls and laboratories, observatories and offices, teaching hospitals and Antarctic field sites. And it takes an economic and emotional toll on female researchers and stifles their scientific contributions, according to a sweeping new study released. The solution will require a ''systemwide change to the culture and climate in higher education,'' the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine conclude. The study draws on decades of research and dozens of interviews with women who were targets of harassment. Though female researchers have talked about the problem for years, some say the findings from one of science's most prestigious institutions come at a critical juncture: As long-rumored allegations involving high-profile scientists finally come to light and organizations rethink their own rules for harassment, the 300-page report could help push substantive change.

Inspired by the re-telling of her sorority sister's engineering success in the now classic film ''Hidden Figures'', a Virginia woman named Gladys West is coming forward with her hidden history and involvement in created a technology most of us use everyday - GPS. As it turns out, like her sorority sister, West is also an important forgotten figure of technological advancement in the U.S. before and during the Civil Rights movement. This time, its West's work on the modern day GPS system during her 42-year career at the Navy base in Dahlgren where her work was essential to her team which developed the Global Positioning System in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Grace Hopper Celebration is the world's largest gathering of women technologists. It is produced by AnitaB.org and presented in partnership with ACM.

Artificial intelligence systems and machine-learning algorithms have come under fire recently because they can pick up and reinforce existing biases in our society, depending on what data they are programmed with. A Stanford team used special algorithms to detect the evolution of gender and ethnic biases among Americans from 1900 to the present. (Image credit: mousitj / Getty Images) But an interdisciplinary group of Stanford scholars turned this problem on its head in a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published April 3. The researchers used word embeddings - an algorithmic technique that can map relationships and associations between words - to measure changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes over the past century in the United States. They analyzed large databases of American books, newspapers and other texts and looked at how those linguistic changes correlated with actual U.S. Census demographic data and major social shifts such as the women's movement in the 1960s and the increase in Asian immigration, according to the research.

Atmospheric scientist Maria Zatko was close to completing her thesis on ground-level ozone in 2014 when she learned of a perfect opportunity to fill a gap in her research on this air pollutant.Zatko and her adviser at the University o f Washington in Seattle realized she could join an ongoing research project in Utah that was studying causes of the area's unusually high ozone levels during winter. Zatko wanted to measure the release of nitrogen oxides from snow. But collecting the snow samples would require a month of fieldwork, and Zatko had no funding to cover the costs. So Zatko decided to try an emerging source for research funding - online crowdfunding. Through a campaign on a website, Experiment.com, she raised $12,000. The cash was ''critical'' to completing her Ph.D., she says. ''Even more important is how it has played out postgraduation,'' she adds, because presenting the data at a conference led to her current job with an environmental consulting firm. ''I'm just eternally grateful'' to the 155 people who responded to her funding plea, she says.

The business world has long been a boys' club. Women C.E.O.s and founders of color make up a small portion of entrepreneurs who have reached the top. Each one of the women in this group tableau has raised $1 million or more in outside capital, breaking barriers and shattering glass ceilings along the way.

Technology innovation is the bedrock of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and NCWIT employees are the engine that fuels it. Over the past three years, they have been on a journey to rapidly transform the company to better align with changing technology trends and evolving customer needs. A critical element of this transformation has been the re-ignition of our innovation engine. Every HPE innovation comes from a team of individuals, each contributing their unique perspective, knowledge and experience to advance the way the world works and lives. The full power of our people is driving HPE's success. A focus on Inclusion and Diversity helps to drive new business, fuel innovation, attract and attain the best employees. Their culture supports and inspires women in technical roles through the stages of their careers and lives as we continuously push the boundaries of technology to deliver life-enriching innovations that impact our customers, partners and the world. HPE has provided leadership and financial support, as an NCWIT investment partner, for the NCWIT Collegiate Award, an honor that annually recognizes undergraduate and graduate women's technical contributions to projects that demonstrate a high level of innovation and potential impact.

The pay disparity between women and men is often framed as a difference in experience. But women actually miss out on pay as they gain experience, according to new data from tech job platform Hired. Within the first two years of working in a tech job, women in the U.S. ask for and receive 98 percent of what their male counterparts make in the same job at the same company, according to the report. Over time, that disparity grows. On average, women with seven to 10 years of experience, for example, ask for about 90 cents on the dollar and are offered slightly more - 93 cents for every dollar a man is offered. Women with 13 to 14 years of experience ask for 94 cents for every dollar and receive just 92 cents.