Famous Female Inventors

Audrey Goddard

Vice President of Research and Development at uBiome, Inc. The inventor of over 600 patents in her previous roles, Dr. Goddard specialized in the integration of drug and diagnostic research and development, first at Genentech and then with Genomic Health. Dr. Goddard earned her Ph.D. in cancer genetics at the University of Toronto, then was a Postdoctoral Fellow at London’s Imperial Cancer Research Fund. She spent thirteen years at Genentech, starting by leading high-throughput DNA sequencing for research and new drug discovery, then applying genomics and genomic technologies to companion diagnostics for oncology drug development.

Li Zhang

Li received a B.S. in computer science from Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

From 2009 to 2011, she held a post-doctoral position with the Institute of Digital Media, Peking University, Beijing. From 2011 to 2018, she was a Senior Staff Engineer with the Multimedia Research and Development and Standards Group, Qualcomm Inc., USA.

Li is currently the Lead of the Multimedia Laboratory, ByteDance Inc. She was a Software Coordinator for the Audio and Video Coding Standard (AVS) and the 3D extensions of High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). Her research interests include 2D/3D image/video coding, video processing, and transmission. Dr. Zhang was appointed as an Editor of AVS and the Main Editor of the Software Test Model for 3DV Standards.

Victoria Y. H. Wood

Some of Victoria’s awarded patents to date include inventions in the energy, transportation, human welfare, medical, healthcare, mining, imaging, and nuclear reactor sectors.

Victoria shares a common goal to improve the quality of human life.

Her latest patents consist of a nerve stimulation system, subsystem, headset, and earpiece, as well as energy dissipative cushioning elements. In one of her inventions, the nerve stimulation system, Wood has devised a unique system consisting of a headset and earpiece that includes two or more ear-contacting elements. Her invention is capable of being mounted onto an earpiece housing with projecting mounting structures that provide mechanical and electrical connections between ear-contacting elements and housing through various materials and configurations.

Valentina Salapura

Valentina is an IBM Master Inventor and a system architect at IBM Watson Health.

Her research interests are high-performance computing, resilient cloud computing, and parallel computing.

Salapura received a Ph.D. in computer science from Technische Universitat Wien.

Valentina was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2012 for contributions to the architecture and design of multiprocessor systems. She is a recipient of the 2006 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Special Achievements for the Blue Gene/L supercomputer and quantum chromodynamics.