Edna Matta-Camacho

Edna Matta-Camacho remembers being a very inquisitive girl who used to open radios or hair dryers with a screwdriver to find out how they worked. Occasionally, she would break things in the process, to the disappointment of her mother. “But at the same time, she supported my curiosity,” Matta-Camacho says. Today, she’s just as curious. But instead of tinkering with household objects, Matta-Camacho is now a senior assessment officer at the Pharmaceutical Drugs Directorate of Health Canada, where she ensures that new drugs have fulfilled preclinical and clinical requirements of safety and efficacy to meet regulatory standards. She also created a foundation that aims to stimulate the scientific curiosity of girls and young women in rural Colombia, just like her mother did for her. Matta-Camacho was first introduced to chemistry at the age of 14. “It was like love at first sight,” she recalls. She was captivated by the idea