ISSUE NO. 7 | NOVEMBER 2020
WiE - UC Newsletter IEEE Student Branch of the UC - Women in Engineering Affinity Group
ISSUE NO. 7 | NOVEMBER 2020
IEEE WiE interviews Teresa Carreiro Teresa Carreiro has a degree in Informatics Engineering, from ISEP, and over 25 years of experience working in IT for various businesses. She is co-founder of Critical Manufacturing, and currently is the Operations Director of the company. Her work is to guarantee that Critical Manufacturing’s workers have a great working environment where they can be creative, happy and productive in their daily challenges. Since 2018 she is vice president of the Porto Tech Hub association. She is an agile methodology enthusiastic and she believes that it is always possible to implement simple solutions even for complex problems.
1. You started your path taking a Bachelor's degree in Informatics Engineering. At that point, what were your prospects for the future? Did you ever second guess the choice you had made? I entered ISEP in 1991. Informatics Engineering was not trendy by that time. It was one of my choices among other possibilities that were quite different from informatics, but most of them were related with engineering. By that time, I was not completely aware of what was Informatics (or computer science), but I took the opportunity. I never had the chance to have a computer (they were extremely expensive by that time) while I was studying and we had to be creative in the usage of the desktops that we had available in the IT department. The reason beyond the bachelor degree is that I was able to start working sooner (and therefore being able to not depend on anyone). At the beginning it was not easy to capture the logical way of thinking because it was different from everything I knew. I really enjoyed the course and never looked back. Once I was in, I never thought about choosing a different path. 2. At what point in your career and how did Critical Manufacturing come about? I started working at Infineon in 2004 after working in several companies as a software jn
engineer. That’s where I‘ve met my partners at Critical Manufacturing. I was responsible for the Development Center’s Quality area (an area that I’ve been working on since then). Infineon created a spin-off called Qimonda, which in 2009 declared bankruptcy. By that time I was invited by Francisco Almada Lobo (Critical Manufacturing’s CEO) to start a new company .that would develop the best MES (Manufacturing Execution System) system and at the same time, we would be able to use the manufacturing knowledge that we gained so far. This would be Critical Manufacturing. 3. What were the biggest challenges you had to overcome as the co-founder of Critical Manufacturing? In 2009, when we founded the company, I got pregnant with my youngest child. When I started at Critical Manufacturing I was Scrum Master of a new product in a new company. Nobody knew anything about Scrum and Agile methodologies were just starting in our country. Our team was very experienced in software development but none of us had experience in Agile. This is a very different mindset where you empower the team and rely heavily on each other. No one was used to that. Portugal was going through a crisis and the Qimonda’s situation left everyone insecure. The biggest challenge
ISSUE NO. 7 | NOVEMBER 2020
was creating a new team in a new company with a new product from scratch while being pregnant đ&#x;˜Š . Once I returned from my parental leave, I took several job positions through the years, Project Manager, Program Manager, Quality Director and then Operations Director. In my current position I take care of our People. I’m responsible for recruitment, development, training and site management, among other activities. My training is at Informatics Engineering, so being in a position where I’m responsible for the Human Resources area is another (great) challenge. 4. Can you tell us a little bit more about the company’s work and what you do there as an Operations Director? Critical Manufacturing develops software services and products for advanced manufacturies. We develop an MES (Manufacturing Execution System) system that is now one of the world’s references in the area. We work for industries that are related with electronics, semiconductors, medical devices. It is a very interesting area as we get to know how “thingsâ€? (chips, memories, boards, syringes, ventilators, etc) are done. As an Operations Director I’m responsible for two main areas – People and Quality. I’m responsible for all the processes related with our people and for guaranteeing that we reach the desired quality of our projects. 5. During your academic and professional path, did you ever feel discriminated against or underestimated for being a woman? No. I never felt discriminated or eye witnessed any discrimination act in the professional world. Thankfully, I’ve always worked in safe environments during the last 26 years. I really do not have any complaints. 6. What would you tell a young woman who is thinking about starting a career in engineering? ahahaha
YES! Go for it. I personally like the knowledge that engineering disciplines can bring to us. How they simplify our mindset and make us look to complex problems, analyze them and solve them. It’s really amazing how we can improve our way of thinking in a very logical way. Regarding the advice just remember that you’re as good as everyone else. Go for the toughest tasks, don’t settle down, get involved in communities and knowledge sharing sessions. Learn as much as you can and work hard. 7. Who would you say is your biggest inspiration? I really don’t have only one person as that is quite hard to find. There are several people that I admire and that helped me to grow: my mother, my husband and my boss are some examples. These are all people that always inspire me in different areas/times of my life. 8. Looking back, would you say you met the expectations you had for critical manufacturing? And what are your expectations for the future? Yes, absolutely. Critical Manufacturing keeps growing with good values and excellent people. We’ve been through a lot but we are always able to work it out. I’m lucky enough to work with great teams (both management team and my own team). We will continue to grow with good heads on our shoulders and position ourselves as the reference company/MES system for advanced industries. 9. To add a bit to humour to the interview, what was the most useless item you were offered at a conference? Well, I always get annoyed with lanyards and keychains (especially when I get several in the same conference bag) đ&#x;˜Š . I have one lanyard for my office access card and a keychain for my keys. I really don’t need more.
Her legacy, now more than ever, will forever be cherished.
Filipa Moreira
ISSUE NO. 7 | NOVEMBER 2020
Biography MARIA AMÉLIA CHAVES Maria Amélia Chaves (1911-2017) was the first Portuguese female engineer from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon. She started studying civil engineering in 1931 at 20 years old and finished her degree in 1937. Her father played a big role in her choice of career, as he was also an engineer (military engineer). However, Maria Amélia also liked to "build things” since childhood; her father had a farm and Maria Amélia took advantage of that space to do her first constructions. She was also the first woman to take part in Ordem dos Engenheiros (1938) and the first engineer, in Portugal, developing antiearthquake calculations in buildings. After an internship at the office of Eng. Arantes e Oliveira, she started working as a construction supervisor at Câmara Municipal de Lisboa; after some years, she resigned and started working for herself (self-employed). In 2011, she was honored at the IST centennial celebrations. ahahh
Maria Amélia never felt any kind of discrimination because of being a woman, not even when she had to deal with workers in the construction. However, her personal life got a little pinched because of her career. MARIA AMÉLIA CHAVES WHEN SHE STARTED HER DEGREE AT IST.
SOURCE: ORDEM DOS ENGENHEIROS
Maria Amélia married only when she was 28 years, after finishing her graduation, which for that time was a bit late. She had 5 children. Maria Amélia completed her last project (recover the building where she lived) while in her 80s and passed in 2017, aged 106.
Carolina Travassos
Curiosity of the month... Remember Margaret Hamilton, from last month’s newsletter? Did you know that while working on the simulator built to test in-flight programs, Margaret Hamilton regularly brought her young daughter, Lauren, to work with her on weekends. One day Lauren crashed the simulator, built by her mother, by hitting a button while the craft was in flight, causing the prematurely ending of the mission. Hence, Hamilton thought of one solution to prevent an astronaut from making the same mistake, so she programmed backstops since the consequences in space would be far more disastrous. The backstops came to be very important in the mission since the computer processor module nearly overloaded as the craft neared the moon, which could have forced Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to abort the mission. However, the program alarms indicated “executive overflows”, i.e. the guidance computer couldn’t complete all the tasks required in real-time and had to postpone some of them. The program developed by Hamilton could interrupt the astronauts' normal mission displays with priority ones as critical alarms in case of an emergency. For that reason, although Hamilton has always been on planet earth she is one of the reasons that a man could step on the moon in July 1969.
Alexandra Pereira
ISSUE NO. 7 | NOVEMBER 2020
Achievement EMMANUELLE CHARPENTIER AND JENNIFER DOUDNA The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing�. It is the first time that two women share this prize, rising to seven the total number of women laureates in this field. French Professor and researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna began their partnership in 2011 with the aim of studying the immune jnk
system of a Streptococcus bacterium so that perhaps they could develop a new form of antibiotic. Instead, they discovered CRISPR/Cas9, the genetic scissors that have revolutionized the life sciences. With this tool, scientists can make specific and precise changes to the DNA with the purpose of understanding the function of different genes and how they interact. CRISPR/Cas9 has so far contributed to many important discoveries in basic research, is currently driving the development of new immunotherapies for cancer and can potentially lead to the cure of inherited diseases.
SOURCE: ALEXANDER HEINL/EPA
Beatriz Santos