By honoring the legacy of women in data science, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers are pushing for a more inclusive and innovative future in the rapidly growing field.
Published in the June 2025 issue of Patterns , the piece "Highlighting the Achievements and Impact of Women in Data Science" was written by Lauren Higa, a PhD student in the Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering Program in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience , and her advisor, Youping Deng, professor and director of the Bioinformatics Core at the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM).
The article honors pioneers including Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer; Florence Nightingale, who used data to improve public health; and NASA mathematicians Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, whose computational work was crucial to space exploration. These trailblazers laid the foundation for modern data science. It also highlights current leaders such as Fei-Fei Li, whose ImageNet project revolutionized artificial intelligence and computer vision, showing the lasting impact of women in the field.
A call for equity and inclusion
Despite these remarkable contributions, women remain underrepresented in science fields, making up only 23% of the global data science workforce, according to a 2024 Anaconda report. Higa and Deng argue that this lack of representation hinders progress, limits innovation and introduces bias in data-driven technologies.
To address the gender gap, Higa and Deng propose a range of actionable solutions, including strengthening mentorship and sponsorship opportunities, ensuring equitable access to authorship and publishing, and creating institutional policies that promote work-life balance and long-term career support.
Through their research and leadership at JABSOM's Bioinformatics Core, the UH Mānoa team hopes to inspire positive change in the data science landscape, one that is inclusive, equitable and reflective of the communities it aims to serve.
