In the framework of the International Day of Girls in ICT, the STEAM Women's Encyclopedia was officially presented, a project that seeks to make new reference women visible and encourage technological vocations among girls. The initiative came from Núria Salán, professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Terrassa and president of the Catalan Technology Society, and Sandra Uve, illustrator. "The STEAM Women's Encyclopedia project was born when we realized that we have so many unknown women's names, that we came to know about their achievements and milestones by chance or after doing a very intensive search, that we don't fit in a book. Encyclopedia is synonymous with serious, rigorous and reliable knowledge. So, women deserved an encyclopedia", explains Salán. "In the first two volumes, we find women near, far, alive, dead, known, still unknown, but all of them have in common the generosity they have given us to the rest of humanity. At the moment, we continue to work on new volumes of the project, since we have more than 8,500 women's names collected", adds Salán.
In particular, the first two volumes of the STEAM Women's Encyclopedia present around fifty women. One of them is Elisabeth Prats, CIBER-BBN researcher at the Barcelona Microelectronics Institute (IMB-CNM, CSIC). "I'm a chemist and I work on the functionalization of graphene transistors. They are devices that are used to measure the electrical part of the brain and are able to give the doctor a tool to be able to measure this electrophysiology of the brain", says Prats. "The STEAM Women's Encyclopedia is a fantastic initiative and I am grateful to be a part of it. I hope it serves to awaken technological vocations among girls. I encourage them to do what they like. If they do what they like, they will surely be good", says Prats.