International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025 celebrates MDX’s female science stars

MDX Professor Hemda Garelick is hailed by top chemistry body while graduate Camila Rey da Rosa headhunted for prestigious job at Siemens Netherlands

Top picture shows Camila Rey da Rosa

An MDX Emeritus Professor has been recognised with a prestigious award from the world authority on new chemical elements, atomic weights and standardised measurements in chemistry, announced to celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11th.

Professor Hemda Garelick is the sole UK recipient of this year’s International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)’s Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering awards, which is awarded every two years.

The awardees have been selected based on excellence in research, distinguished accomplishments in teaching, or executive or managerial excellence in the chemical sciences, with a particular focus on leadership and community service.

A chemist and a microbiologist by training, Hemda was a Professor of Environmental Science and Public Health Education at MDX for 32 years, just after Middlesex Polytechnic earned university status. She has a long-standing interest in public health, especially the health and hygiene aspects of sanitation systems. Her research has included environmental microbiology and bio-remediation (in particular antibiotic resistant microorganisms in the environment and in food), and investigations into chemical and microbial pollution of water. She was a researcher at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and is a past President and now Emeritus Fellow of IUPAC’s Chemistry and the Environment Division.

“Professor Hemda Garelick (pictured right) is an inspirational chemist whose sustained and influential contributions to IUPAC have fostered collaboration across diverse chemical disciplines,” says Professor Hemda’s MDX colleague Professor Diane Purchase. 

“A tireless advocate for gender equality in science, she has championed initiatives that support and empower women in chemistry. We are incredibly proud and delighted that her achievements have been recognised with the prestigious Distinguished Female Chemist award. This year’s Global Women’s Breakfast at MDX, which she co-organises, will be a particularly special occasion as we celebrate her award”.

MDX female science talent is at the heart of exciting developments in industry and research.

Multi-skilled MDX Mechatronic Systems Engineering Master’s graduate Camila Rey da Rosa has just been headhunted for a coveted job at Siemens Netherlands, helping develop software for cranes all around the world, such as crane operations at Sydney Harbour.

Camila’s role as Solutions Engineer involves both designing the coding, and a hands-on side of putting the code to the test, with the objective of enhancing efficiency and delivering business improvements. It draws on her expertise in fields such as data analysis, machine learning, automation systems and hardware integration.

She is the newest member of an international team of engineers and contract and legal specialists, from countries including India, Iraq, Italy and Croatia; there is a supportive culture, she says, with colleagues all willing to help each other out. She came to Siemens after a stint as a Controls and Instrumentation Engineer at Element Six, which produces lab diamonds for industry and electronics.

“I want to motivate all women, regardless of culture and age into engineering. I’d also like to motivate men. This is what I had to do in order to be where I am, this is what I know and I’m happy to share it with you.”

MDX graduate and Siemens Netherlands engineer Camila Rey Da Rosa

Camila has trodden a long and exceptionally challenging path to her specialism. She originally trained and worked as a nurse in her native Brazil. She didn’t have the right paperwork to prove her qualifications when she came to the UK more than ten years ago, so had to start from the beginning in her higher education and professional training. Her drive to achieve came from the realisation that: “I can do something to change the circumstances of my future. If I am willing to sacrifice for five or six years, I could change my future in 10-20 years’ time.”

Her studies included a Level 3 Engineering BTEC at West Herts College, and then a Bachelor’s in Biomedical Engineering at MDX at the same time as she was on a Mechatronics Engineering apprenticeship with Amazon, based at their fulfilment centre in Dunstable. The latter combination only became possible with the switch to remote and later hybrid learning during the pandemic.

Camila says the huge work and educational commitments Camila took on “affected every area of my life”. Her husband “helped me out as a team when I had to be eight to ten hours on a computer, doing paperwork, research or uni work. Otherwise it wouldn’t be physically or mentally possible.”

Her close family - a sister in Brazil and parents in Portugal - had to accommodate, accepting she couldn’t come and visit them; some friends understood and were helpful, while others fell by the wayside.

At MDX, Camila says Professor of Design Engineering and Mathematics Mehmet Karamanoglu was “inspirational – very supportive for my whole career”. She was one of the Siemens Connected Curriculum project finalists in 2024 which helped her learn about the company’s values and culture. At the start of her Masters, she won a PPMA/Automate UK engineering scholarship grant which Professor Mehmet nominated her for.

She particularly appreciates “the open mind that MDX brings” with the focus on projects based in industry, and the specific chance to move from theory to practice by participating in WorldSkills UK - “it’s not just the student bubble, this is real life”.

At Tameside College for the WorldSkills UK Industry 4.0 finals last autumn, she said the competition tasks introduced her and teammate Juan Enrique Gonzalez to software they wouldn’t otherwise have had access to, making it “the right place to make mistakes and learn from them; a little bit of industry in a safe environment”.

Camila said her academic journey also “gave me the drive to help other women – to show this is the way you can do it”. She is a member of charity the Women’s Engineering Society Early Careers Board, to support female engineers embarking on professional life, having previously sat on the Apprentice Board while she was at Amazon, and set up a Women in Engineering Board at MDX.

MDX PhD student Neha Nitika Nathaniel’s research is into developing a biosensor which tests for Alzheimer’s. This involves constructing a test kit using electrodes, made of gold in Neha’s case, which detect for the presence of a biomarker to help predict the disease. It’s a cutting-edge area - Neha calls it ‘revolutionary research’ - which enables diagnosis at an earlier stage, bringing some comfort and reassurance to patients and their families, and avoiding the need for a frightening lumber puncture to extract spinal fluid.

Neha (pictured right) is awaiting results from a few human samples and then expects to publish in the next 3-4 months. In her role as a research assistant at UCL, she has previously worked on developing another biosensor to detect levels of the antibiotic Meropenem in critically ill ICU patients’ blood, to help doctors determine what the next dose should be.

Neha began her career in India as an A Level Chemistry teacher until realising that “I wanted to do something more”. She took a Masters in Drug Design and Biomedical Science at Edinburgh Napier University, before applying for PhDs at a range of UK universities. 

She got a personal reply from MDX’s Dr Sandra Appiah. “I bonded well with her and she has been a great mentor,” Neha says.

Now with MDX Professor of Biophysics and Engineering Richard Bayford as her Director of Studies and Professor of Bio-analytical Science Ajit Shah as her co-supervisor, Neha describes herself as “blessed with great mentors” throughout her doctorate. 

“When you are doing a PhD, there are moments that are overwhelming,” she says. “There hasn’t been a time when I couldn’t contact them”.

She adds that it has been similar with Natural Sciences colleagues in the Biophysics and Cancer lab in the Hatchcroft building, where last year there happened to be four or five female researchers and only one male researcher regularly working. 

“Good friendships have developed,” she says. “We are all from diverse backgrounds, we all gelled together and supported each other – not just in our academic work but listening to and comforting each other, which is very important”.

On the message of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Neha says that she has been “[hearing] since I was a child that we need more girls in science. It’s sad that we still see underrepresentation - I think awareness has not reached where it should have been”. She thinks role models in schools, with inspiring female scientists paying visits to speak is a good way forward – pupils should be “aspiring high,” she says. “They should [have] big dreams and then achieve them.”

She is the mother of a 15-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter who along with her ever supportive pillar of strength her husband have “greatly contributed to and been an active part” of her academic journey. “I would love to be an inspiration to my children. They’ve seen me working, they know how it is,” she says.”

Once she completes her PhD, Neha hopes to take her research further in the commercial sector or academia, focusing on the development of biosensor implants that can be regularly monitored.

The Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering awards will be presented during the IUPAC World Chemistry Congress in Kuala Lumpur in July. A IUPAC’s Global Women’s Breakfast will be held at the Hendon Town Hall next to the MDX campus on 11th February, open to staff, students, scientists and professionals, involving a walk, a discussion session over coffee and an Athena SWAN presentation to showcase institutional efforts to support gender equity.

Find out more about studying Natural Sciences at Middlesex University.