Dr. Donna Strickland, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo (my Alma mater), wins the Nobel Prize for Physics last month.  She is only the third woman to have done so.  She joins two other remarkable women – Marie Curie (in 1903) and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (in 1963) – who have accomplished such feats.  Her chirped pulse amplification – a way to create blasts of laser light that deliver massive amounts of energy in a trillionth of  a second or less – is now used across a wide range of applications including laser eye surgery!  I am excited to be a Canadian woman in the field of Science today.  Thank you Dr. Strickland for showing girls that they can make a significant contribution in a traditionally male dominated field of physics.