International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Opening doors for women in science
February 11, 2026
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Queen’s researcher Dr. Sara Nabil, whose work explores computing through materials and design.
International Day of Women and Girls in Science recognizes women working across scientific fields and highlights the importance of supporting women and girls who want to pursue careers in science.
For Queen’s researcher Sara Nabil (Computing), questions about who belongs in computing are about more than statistics. They appear in classrooms and labs, and in the questions students ask themselves about a potential future in the field.
“In computing research, women are still underrepresented,” Nabil says. “You see that in the kinds of questions women ask early on, especially about whether research feels like a viable path.”
Early in her career, she spent several years working in Egypt as a software developer in the telecommunications sector, before moving into academic research. That experience continues to inform how she thinks about careers in science and how she talks with students about the range of paths available to them, including work beyond academia.
Computing, re-imagined
Stepping into Dr. Nabil’s iStudio lab reveals a unique computing environment.
Her research combines computing, electronics, and textile-based design. She describes this work as “interioraction design,” an approach that brings interaction design and interior design together to integrate computing into physical spaces, materials, and objects.
Alongside computers and electronic components are sewing machines and looms. Fabric, conductive thread, sensors, and microcontrollers sit side by side, as students move between coding, stitching, and testing product designs. Projects often involve building electronics directly into textiles and everyday objects. Computing is approached here as a design practice, grounded in materials as much as programming.
At a sewing machine in the iStudio lab, Dr. Nabil works with conductive wire to embed electronics into textiles.
One such example explored in the lab involves fall detection for older adults. Rather than relying on a wearable device that needs to be charged or remembered, sensors can be built into a bathroom rug. The rug looks and feels like an ordinary household item, but embedded electronics allow it to detect sudden changes in pressure and movement.
Programming and system design remain central to the work, but for many students, encountering computing through design challenges the assumptions they arrive with about what computing looks like and who it is for.
“A lot of people come into computing with a very fixed picture of what the field is,” she says. “When they see that computation can be built through materials and environments, it opens up different ways of thinking about both the technology and their place in it.”
How mentorship shapes the lab
That shift in how computing is experienced also shapes how the lab functions day to day.
Mentorship is built into the research process. Ideas are tested openly, work is refined through repeated experimentation, and collaboration is treated as part of rigorous research rather than something that sits alongside it. Students are encouraged to take ownership of projects as they develop, from early design decisions through to analysis and publication.
Over time, this approach has shaped who stays involved. Women make up 77 per cent of lab members, and more than 83 per cent of undergraduate research assistants and supervisees are women.
Undergraduate students Dallas Doherty, Molly Stewart, Joelle Lintag, Bianca Bucchino, and Sydney Shereck working on a research project in Queen’s iStudio Research.
Her commitment to supporting women in science has been recognized at Queen’s. In 2023, she received the Ban Righ Inspiring Women Award for mentorship and for supporting women in achieving their goals.
Beyond Queen’s, she also works with schools and community groups, leading workshops with girls, women, and Indigenous communities that broaden how they see computing and science careers.
“I don’t think confidence comes from being told you belong,” she says. “It comes from being able to do the work, to experiment, to fail, and to see that your ideas matter in the process.”
Read more International Day of Women and Girls in Science stories from the Faculty of Arts & Science and Advancement.
