Every year at Hannover Messe, Deutsche Messe honors a young female expert who has made a particularly notable contribution to scientific and technical disciplines. The initiative seeks to motivate companies to do even more to recognize and promote the achievements and exceptional commitment of their female employees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions. Sahana Shastry received the Young Engineer Woman Award at the FemWorX Career Congress. An independent jury consisting of the members of the FemWorX Congress Advisory Board selected her as the winner among three nominated female experts.
Dr. Kathrin Rüschenschmidt, director innovation process & PMO at Emerson and member of the FemWorX Advisory Board, presented the award in her function as a member of the jury.
Shastry received her master of science in space sciences and technologies from the University of Bremen in Germany last year. Since then, she has worked as a systems engineer at DSI Aerospace, focusing on mass storage systems for onboard electronics to support the expansion of ESA's Copernicus program.
She also heads the Women in Aerospace Europe working group, in which she authored the white papers where measures are being investigated and implemented to bridge the skills and gender gap in the aerospace industry. Shastry serves as an advisory member and COO for the student rocket and space group ASTRA from Bremen in her free time. She is also co-author of the chapter on EDI promoting the new spaceflight economy in the Oxford Handbook of New Space Economy.
Other finalists included Michèle Korošec, a physicist and data-science consultant at Sopra Steria, and Dr. Annika Möslein, Ph.D. in engineering from Oxford University, who joined Quantum Dice as a technical project manager for the research and development programs.
Lisa Ihde won the inaugural award in 2023.
