National Coding Week: Meet Vinita Marwaha Madill

Every day for National Coding Week, we’ll be sharing a blog about a technical person. Today, we’re featuring Vinita who is a Space Operations Engineer and founder of @RocketWomen. Rocket women is inspiring women globally by highlighting diverse trailblazing women in STEM.

What does your job involve?

I work on developing empowering content and interviewing women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) globally for the website that I run, Rocket Women. My passion and the goal of Rocket Women is to inspire girls globally to consider a career in STEM, particularly in space. During my career, I’ve met some amazing people — especially other positive female role models. I think you need those role models out there, tangible and visible, to be able to inspire the next generation of young girls to become astronauts or be whatever they want to be. As Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” It’s one of my favourite quotes and is absolutely true. I started Rocket Women to give these women a platform to spread their advice for young women considering a STEM career.

As a space operations engineer a typical day could be varied from developing astronaut/cosmonaut (Russian astronaut) spacewalk training with colleagues in Russia to creating and testing missions for the astronauts to control the European Robotic Arm (ERA). The European Robotic Arm is a robotic arm that is due to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS), to help astronauts and cosmonauts carry out spacewalks and install new parts of the space station.

Once the robotic arm is launched, the operations team will be working on-console and from Mission Control in Moscow on robotic arm operations and supporting the spacewalks conducted by the astronauts and cosmonauts onboard the ISS.

What’s your favourite thing about your job?

The space industry is inherently global in nature. One of my favourite things about working in the space industry is that the environment is extremely international. I enjoy being able to work with colleagues from all around the world to design future human spaceflight projects. We need this diversity and creativity to solve the really hard problems that we have in the world today.

Ultimately, engineering is about problem-solving, communication, teamwork and creativity; skills that we need for the future. The STEM field is based on innovation and creativity — we need diverse viewpoints to innovate and provide creative solutions that involve our entire population.

A lack of diversity in STEM also affects the systems that we create and the solutions that we provide. The technology that we're developing and building today and in the next decades will be used by a variety of people of all races and genders. The creators and developers of these systems and tech, including AI and facial recognition algorithms and training datasets, for example, need to represent this range of backgrounds, cultures and experiences to prevent unconscious biases being incorporated into the design and its application. Through Rocket Women, we’re aiming to ensure that these stories of diverse women in STEM globally are visible.

How did you start coding?

I started coding at university studying Maths and Physics with Astrophysics at King’s College London, where we learnt the basic structures and syntax of a common programming/scripting language Python initially.

Can you share one practical tip about how to start coding?

Learning to code to work on a project that you’re excited about is a great way to start on your coding journey.

How can we contact you?

Follow me on Twitter:
@Rocket_Woman1
@Rocketwoman

Vinita has taken over our Instagram account today — click here to watch her story and find out more about her career.