March 24 is Ada Lovelace Day. In honor of Lovelace, one of the world's first computer programmers, more than 1,500 people have pledged to blog about a woman in technology on March 24, 2009. I decided to write specifically about a black woman. My apologies for it reading a lot like a cutesy telejournal news report; I find non-fiction much more challenging to write creatively than fiction, and my head is currently full of imminent novel deadline. But here goes:
That's T.H.U.N.D.E.R, as in "Thin-Layer Composite-Unimorph Piezoelectric Driver and Sensor." According to Jocelyn Harrison, who received the 1996 R&D 100 Award for her role in developing the THUNDER technology along with her fellow researchers Richard Hellbaum, Robert Bryant, Robert Fox, Antony Jalink, and Wayne Rohrbach: "If you contort a piezoelectric material a voltage is generated. Conversely, if you apply a voltage, the material will contort." THUNDER's applications include electronics, optics, jitter suppression, noise cancellation, pumps, and valves.
Doctor Harrison, born in 1964, is an engineer at NASA, in the Langley Research Center. The long list of patents she holds for her inventions reads like the Ginsbergian eyeball kicks in a cyberpunk science fiction story: Electrostrictive polymer actuator; a polymer with polarizable moieties; thermally stable, piezoelectric and pyroelectric polymeric substrate... If that isn't heady enough, THUNDER heralds a future of self-repairing machines with morphing parts, and robots with synthetic muscles. And THUNDER's low-voltage characteristic allows it to be used in internal biomedical applications like heart pumps.
Doctor Harrison holds Bachelor's, Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has received the Technology All-Star Award from the National Women of Color Technology Awards, NASA's Exceptional Achievement Medal, and NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal. Plus she hosts school visits to the Langely Center, and apparently reads a mean Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp.
