WOMEN IN ENGINEERING PRESENTS:

The Journey to Becoming Women Engineers in Colombia

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2023 • 11:00AM - 12:00PM EDT

Jointly presented by two extraordinary women engineers, Adriana and Maria Clara, this presentation shares some inspirational stories from their own journey of becoming engineers in Colombia. Through their eyes, we will see how two girls growing up discovered their passion in science and engineering, and how they pursued their dreams despite many challenges. They'll share their stories of the encouragement they received along the way which guided their careers towards becoming leaders in electronics engineering and bioengineering.

SPEAKER BIOS

Adriana Maldonado Franco

Ph.D. Candidate, Universidad de La Sabana

Adriana Maldonado Franco obtained a Master degree in Electronics Engineering, with an emphasis in Biomedical Engineering, from the Escuela Colombiana de Ingenieria Julio Garavito. She worked as an Electronics Engineer at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Adriana started working in engineering applied to healthcare in the telemedicine research group at Universidad Nacional when she was an undergraduate student. When she moved to Argentina for two and half a years, she worked at a hospital leading the biomedical engineering team and took biomedical engineering courses at Universidad Favaloro. Returning to Colombia, she worked for a local distributor of radiology medical devices. 

Adriana is a candidate for a Ph.D. degree in Biosciences at Universidad de La Sabana. She is co-leading a project to launch the first spin-off of the Universidad de La Sabana, iAMed, where the goal is to continue developing and transfer more industrial medical solutions that have been invented by the University into patents from previous research projects. She is passionate about biological signal acquisition and processing as well as the use of machine-learning and artificial intelligence to solve health related issues.

Maria Clara De La Hoz Romo

Ph.D. Candidate, Universidad de La Sabana

Maria Clara is a Bioengineer with a distinguished academic background from Universidad El Bosque, where she graduated with honors. She is a candidate for a Ph.D. degree in Biosciences at Universidad de La Sabana. Her journey in the field of Bioengineering began during her undergraduate years, where Maria Clara actively contributed to the research efforts of the bioimpedance and proteins research groups at Universidad El Bosque. It was during that time that she developed a profound interest in the intersection of engineering and biology. Her academic pursuits led her to the Laboratorio de Genética Molecular Bacteriana research group, where she developed her thesis project titled "Analysis of the mobilization platforms of the mrsA, tetk, and mphC genes of Colombian isolates of Staphylococcus aureus." This project provided her with invaluable exposure to genomics and the intricate world of biological data analysis.

Presently, Maria Clara’s research efforts are focused on the discovery of compounds with anti-infective properties, particularly as potential treatments for acne vulgaris, exploring the fields of metabolomics and transcriptomics. Her passion lies in the omic sciences, biotechnology, and the utilization of advanced biological data processing techniques to combat antimicrobial resistance and health issues