A medical school course in genetics changed Deya Corzo’s outlook on medicine. In turn, her research and leadership work has helped change the lives of thousands of people with a rare disorder and has provided renewed hope to millions more.

Corzo was recently promoted to senior medical director at Genzyme Corp., and since 2001 she had been the doctor overseeing the biotech’s company’s efforts to create a treatment for Pompe Disease, a rare, debilitating and often fatal neuromuscular disease. Those efforts led to the approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of Myozyme in April 2006. Today, thousands of people in 30 countries receive the treatment.

“To go from having a condition where there’s no hope to the potential of it being treatable and being able to regain quality of life is very rewarding for the team,” Corzo says. “It’s not only that it is the first treatment for a neuromuscular disease, but it’s the innovation behind it. The way the trials were designed, the way families and patients were supported, the way Genzyme was open and generous in terms of collaboration — it made it an incredible experience.”

Corzo, 40, was in medical school in her native Colombia when a course in genetics ignited her imagination.

“I remember thinking this must have been what physiologists in the Renaissance felt, when all of a sudden they were able and allowed to dissect the human body — and what that did to the study of physiology,” Corzo recalls. “Suddenly, we are able to open up what had been a completely hidden box of information that can explain so much about human disease.”

Following medical school, a fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a residency in pediatrics, Corzo worked as a clinical fellow in genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital. In 2001, Genzyme offered her a chance to help lead the interdisciplinary team of researchers already working on the Pompe treatment. Corzo’s passionate belief in the power of genetics to improve lives helped sustain the research along its long and difficult path to approval, colleagues say.

For Corzo, Genzyme offered a chance to bring a different cultural approach and broader resources to bear on genetics research. She also found an urgency that motivated researchers during the arduous journey to approval for Myozyme, which required novel approaches to clinical trials because the disease is so rare — about 10,000 people worldwide are known to be afflicted, according to Genzyme.

Corzo believes the field of genetics, which she says holds great promise to treat the “big diseases” such as cancer and heart disease, is well-suited for women who want to achieve great things.

“If you have something to offer, you will be given a seat at the table,” she says. “When you are in a field in which innovation is key for success, things have to happen quickly. The artificial barriers that preclude women’s best participation in other areas — they don’t exist.”

Mary Lynne Hedley was in Nicaragua to establish health clinics, overwhelmed by severe poverty in the Central American country, when she realized that the best way for her to apply her expertise in immunology was in the biotechnology business.

“I decided that I could help people on a broader scale by doing what I’m doing now — which is making drugs,” said Hedley, 44, whose realization was also influenced while volunteering in other developing countries, such as Nepal and Thailand.

Now Hedley, chief scientific officer for MGI Pharma Inc., heads the Bloomington, Minn.-based biotechnology firm’s research and development efforts from its facility in Lexington, where scientists are busy shepherding several cancer drugs through late-stage clinical trials.

In fact, Hedley is in the midst of growing her staff in Lexington from about 30 employees to an expected 80 workers by 2008, as MGI moves all of its drug-development operations from Baltimore and Bloomington to the Bay State.

When away from her expanding operation in Lexington, Hedley said she devotes much of her time to raising her three children — ages 16, 9 and 7 — with her husband and fellow scientist, Robert Urban.

Beyond work and family, Hedley is involved in efforts to promote science-related learning at high schools in New Hampshire and has served as a judge in the Massachusetts State Science Fair. She is also a longtime mentor to undergraduate science students at Harvard University.

Hedley’s love for science began during childhood in Toledo, Ohio, where she dreamed of becoming a biological oceanographer. But studying life in the sea lost its allure when she learned about the limited job prospects in the field during her senior year at Purdue University in Indiana.

Instead, she decided to study microbiology as an undergraduate at Purdue and eventually earned a doctorate in molecular immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

During a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard, she and fellow scientists developed technology that stimulates the body’s immune response to fight cancer. She and the other post-doctoral fellows were drinking wine at a scientific retreat in the mountains of New Mexico when they decided to license the technology from Harvard, and they formed biotechnology firm Zycos Inc. in 1996.

After Zycos brought its lead drug, ZYC101a. through Phase 2 clinical trials, Hedley, president and CEO of the company, played a key role in negotiating its sale to MGI for $50 million in 2004.

She remains involved in developing drugs using former Zycos technology in her current role at MGI. “Typically, science doesn’t work out,” she explained. “You have to have passion. You can never give up. You must have a passion to know how things work.”

Growing up in Pune, India, Asa Kalavade says that the good students either went into medicine or engineering. As a good student, she chose the latter. That decision eventually brought her to New England to co-found Tatara Systems Inc.

“Engineering was not common at that time for women, but I thought it was challenging,” she says, and credits her science-teacher mother for giving encouragement.

“My mom was especially supportive,” Kalavade explains. “Her generation did not have the (career) choices that women have today in India.”

Having achieved her undergraduate degree in electronics and engineering in Pune, Kalavade next studied electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. There she says she “got involved in very interesting work — hardware/software co-design — and wrote some seminal papers on the topic.”

Deciding to continue with research, she went to work for Bell Labs in 1995.

“We were paid to have fun and work on whatever we wanted,” she says. Brought in on a project to develop software around digital signal processors (DSPs), the goal was to “build the fastest, smallest DSP for modems and multimedia applications.”

Though the success and work was exciting, Kalavade said she was growing impatient. “I wanted to broaden and get business experience.”

So in 2000, she joined New York-based telecom startup Savos as vice president of technology and led the trial of its Media Crossbar Gateway for real-time audio streaming over third-generation networks in South Korea.

But after a few months, Kalavade again grew impatient, this time to do her own thing. She had seen mobile carriers’ interest in wi-fi and so, with a partner, Hong Jiang, she set out to discover how to merge wi-fi networking with cellular networks. She spent considerable research time in Europe, then filed three patents in 2001, rounded up seed funding and launched Tatara Systems.

In 2002, Highland Capital Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners provided funding ($29 million to date), and Tatara took off. Its first-generation product won clients including Vodafone, O2 UK, and Helio.

Kalavade, 39, has provided the technical leadership behind Tatara’s products, which enable telecom carriers to offer users converged connectivity, as well as voice, messaging and multimedia applications.

“It’s mobile broadband — 3G data service with wi-fi access,” Kalavade says. “We built the back-end technology to match carrier networks and software for the end user’s laptop.”

Like her co-designed products, Kalavade manages to maintain equilibrium between work and home life, which includes a serial-entrepreneur husband and a 3-year-old son.

Of her husband, she says, “We do kitchen-table brainstorming. We are the biggest critics for each other.”

In high school history class, we all learned about a loosely related group of men in the 15th and 16th centuries that dedicated their lives to advancing the common good through the advancement of both science and the arts. Today, we refer to them as Renaissance men.

You can call Christina Lampe-Önnerud a Renaissance woman.

Lampe-Önnerud, Boston-Power Inc.’s founder and CEO, was born in Sweden, of German and Swedish parents. She speaks three languages — English, Swedish and German — and holds degrees in general chemistry, calculus and inorganic chemistry.

She inherited a keen interest in science from her father, Wolfgang Lampe, a scientist who helped invent high-voltage power transmission while working at ABB Ltd.

But from both her parents, she was also instilled with a love of the arts — particularly music.

In Sweden, she was a member of Sweet Adelines International, a worldwide organization of women singers that perform choral arrangements featuring a barbershop harmony. When she came to the United States permanently in 1995, she joined a local chapter, but also founded her own group, the 20-singer Stardust Show Chorus.

As a scientist and technologist, Lampe-Önnerud has focused on power-generation technologies for most of her post-graduate career. She served as a director and senior scientist at Bell Communications Research, where she was responsible for energy storage, and before that at Woburn’s Quantum Energy Technologies Corp. working on new energy technologies using organic and inorganic materials.

Just prior to founding Boston-Power, she was one of the youngest people to be named a partner at Tiax LLC, the R&D house that spun out from Arthur D. Little.

As an entrepreneur, Lampe-Önnerud wanted to create not just a great innovation, but a great company. She has been planning it since she finished graduate school in 1996, and with the launch of Boston-Power in 2006, she thinks she has found it.

“I’ve always dreamed of building a company with a heart and a conscience, and so far, it looks as if we’ve done it,” she said.

Boston-Power makes portable battery technologies for consumer electronics, such as laptop computers. The technology enables computers to charge more quickly and hold a charge longer, with greater safety.

While Boston-Power’s value lies in its science, Lampe-Önnerud attributes the company’s early success to its people — and to the broad worldview that she and her husband Per Önnerud, who is chief technology officer, bring to the company’s 40 employees.

“Part of my skill set is bringing people together from different backgrounds and cultures.”

When Paula Long was growing up, technology and computers were the farthest things from her mind. Maybe she’d be an air-traffic controller. Maybe a pharmacist.

It wasn’t until Long had dropped out of college and began working as an accounting clerk, “counting other people’s money,” as she puts it, that she returned to college and “latched onto computers.” She graduated from Westfield State College with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

Long, 45, is now best known as the founder and vice president of products and strategy at storage company EqualLogic Inc. in Nashua, N.H. Her colleagues say that from a product engineering standpoint, Long has taken an idea and developed it into one of the most well-respected and trusted storage architectures today. Her role in leading product development is often combined with her abilities to successfully sell the product. Long is credited as a leader in helping EqualLogic raise $52 million in equity capital. She was also granted a 2006 patent for EqualLogic’s popular “Snapshots” of stored data.

“She has a memory like a sponge and works (many extra hours) almost every day of the week to deliver the best product in the industry,” says John Joseph, vice president of marketing at EqualLogic.

Along the way, Long has served in director and senior positions at Allaire Corp., Bright Tiger Technologies and Digital Equipment Corp. If there’s one thing she has learned: “You can’t do it all yourself.”

“You need to delegate and have leverage,” she says.

Successful executives and companies should also remember to have fun, says Long. That’s why Long decided to form a “fun committee” at EqualLogic. The committee is responsible for celebrating the arrival of new employees, planning the annual ski trip, making arrangements for lunch on Fridays and monthly barbecues in the company parking lot. The “fun” caught on slowly. “Now you’re waiting for your burger,” jokes Long. The company has now expanded to 80 employees.

EqualLogic is also a civic partner with the Nashua Soup Kitchen, where, through Long’s mentorship, her 17-year-old son has donated over two tons of food through his involvement in corporate food drives.

Long also takes time to speak to high school students and grade-schoolers across Massachusetts as part of the Women in Engineering Forum.

“Women are not encouraged to enter into high tech,” says Long, and that’s exactly why she participates as a speaker and mentor. Long is also a member of the advisory board for Olin College of Engineering in Needham.

“(Technology) is a great career, but it’s something you need to want to do,” says Long. Her advice to young girls interested in a tech career? Eliminate gender as a barrier, and find a strong role model.

Rachel Meyers can trace back her career path to second grade, where she fell in love with math puzzles. Her passion and proficiency were such that by third grade she was tutoring her fellow students. That path led her from Brooklyn to her current role as director of research for Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Cambridge.

Meyers grew up one block from Coney Island, amid tens of thousands of people and kids in Brooklyn apartment buildings. By the time she was ready for college, math was still her thing. She chose Brandeis University because a cousin had gone there and “it was far enough away from home, but close enough that I could visit.”

Midway through college, Meyers developed an interest in chemistry and headed in that direction, then took a slight turn and settled into biochemistry, graduating in 1983.

She accepted a position at Genetics Institute, working to develop a diagnostic kit for sexually transmitted diseases. Meyers says the job was “one of the first significant experiences I had. It was the first time I really saw how powerful our work can be. I met the first patient we treated with Factor VIII,” a protein used to treat hemophiliacs.

Two years later, she went for a biology Ph.D. at MIT, calling it “quite an experience. I worked in a high-pressure lab. They pushed very hard to ensure you’re a critical thinker. I struggled the first two years and then I figured it out: You are often successful if you join forces with someone else and collaborate. I think this especially works for women.”

After moving to Harvard Medical School for post-doctoral work, she had a decision to make: academia or industry. “There was no doubt in my mind that I enjoyed academic life, but doing my post-doc left it all open. I thought, ‘This biology stuff is groovy.’”

Her entry into industry was with Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. where, as a senior scientist, her genomic research focused on alliances with corporate partners to bring forward new therapeutic targets.

Meyers had been with Millennium for four years when her Ph.D. adviser, Phillip Sharp, called. He had co-founded Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and wondered whether she would join him.

Alnylam uses RNA interference (RNAi) — a process that targets and silences specific genes — to create new drugs.

Meyers joined in April 2003, initially supporting Alnylam’s first alliance with Merck. She still works on that partnership and has also initiated a therapeutic treatment program for viral infections, in particular those affecting children.

The company’s anti-viral drug to treat a common childhood infection, ALN-RSV01, is the furthest along among Alnylam’s products. It has progressed through rodent and primate trials, and is now in its third human clinical trial. Meyers continually gets “tapped to speak to the science” of it.

Meyers coaches her 12-year-old daughter’s basketball and softball teams (she also has a 10-year-old son) and volunteers to get inner-city high school kids interested in science.

“I’m a pretty high-energy person. I never get tired out.”

For Stefania Nappi, the daughter of an art dealer and an electrical engineer, you can say that both creativity and working with computers is in her genes. In fact, she began working with computers at the age of 12 alongside her father.

Nappi, who graduated from MIT with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering and computer science, found the atmosphere there stimulating. “I loved the environment where it was OK to be smart,” she says.

Nappi, 51, is now the CEO of PreferredTime Inc., in Boston. The company helps manage time between pharmaceutical salespeople and the medical offices they’re visiting.

With over 28 years at various companies, Nappi has occupied the CEO role at four and been a vice president at a number of others. She is currently sitting on the board of iMakeNews and RedTail Solutions Inc.

Throughout her career, Nappi has built several companies that were “high-functioning” both during her time there and after she left, an accomplishment she is very proud of.

“If you structure the culture and the work so that people really want to do their jobs, they do their work fabulously and the company will succeed. Plus, you can go home every day feeling good,” she says.

Briscoe Rodgers, president and founder of PreferredTime, first met Nappi through a prior venture as a consultant.

“She has great attitude that makes the process of starting a company fun,” he says.

Her work has taught her a few things, most importantly about working relationships. “It’s all about people. Respect people and treat people with respect. When you do that, the web expands and more people help you,” she says.

Nappi is also involved with philanthropy work in the Boston area, including working with Social Venture Partners for two years. SVP is a group of Boston philanthropists who apply venture capital principles to area nonprofits and charities. “It’s a heartening experience,” she says.

Artists for Humanity, one of the group’s nonprofits, hires Boston high school students to produce art. Nappi has been working with the organization for a year now, getting to exercise the art gene in her background.

Another organization, Waltham bookstore and art gallery More than Words, hires at-risk high school students and teaches them computer and reading skills. The business has teamed with Artists for Humanity to make an art gallery at the Waltham storefront.

For Nappi, helping train computer skills at an art gallery combines the two primary influences from her parents, and gives her the opportunity to guide the students into whatever career they choose.

“Do what you love to do. Do what you’re good at. Don’t make apologies. If high tech is what you like, just do it.”

Around the time that Mira Sahney was born, television’s “The Six Million Dollar Man” was chronicling the adventures of an Air Force pilot whose damaged limbs were made functional again with technology.

Three decades later, a medical device developed by Myomo Inc. is bringing motor function back to patients who have suffered neurological trauma, such as stroke. The e100 System doesn’t give users the super-strength of the Bionic Man, but it does give the power of independence to patients who previously couldn’t raise an arm to brush their hair.

And the hero of this story is Sahney.

’The first application is for stroke,” says Sahney of Myomo’s first offering, which works on partially paralyzed upper limbs. “It takes signals from the body and amplifies them, kind of like the power steering system in a car.”

The e100 System, which straps onto a patient’s arm, senses electrical muscle activity and sends that data to a motor, which causes the elbow to move. The motion is initiated and controlled by the patient.

Myomo’s technology, called NeuroRobotics, facilitates neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections in response to learning. By engaging both the patient’s brain and muscle systems, NeuroRobotics helps patients relearn how to move their affected muscles.

“It’s based on a system of learning, like when you’re a child, but after trauma you have to relearn,” Sahney said. “There’s no silver bullet in rehabilitation, but as soon as someone puts it on, because of neuroplasticity, the more they move it the better they get.”

The Michigan native’s journey to the president’s position at Myomo began at the University of Michigan, where she graduated summa cum laude in mechanical engineering, worked in the orthopedic biomechanics lab, designed a heart pump for use in open-heart surgery and played in the Rose Bowl — as a clarinetist in the Michigan band.

After receiving her master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, Sahney went to work at Boeing, BMW and Flow International, which developed machines that cut objects using high-pressure water jets. In 2003, while pursuing her MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, she joined the team of students, researchers and engineers that made up Active Joint Brace and won first prize in the 2004 MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. Active Joint Brace, its research team and its technology became Myomo — a contraction of “my own motion” — with Sahney as president.

For Sahney, 32, it’s the high point — so far — of a career that she described simply as taking science and applying it to everyday life.

“It’s helping the subjects that have been participating in our clinical trials, some of whom have been stroke patients for 20 years, to regain that movement and improve their lives,” she said. “It’s incredibly humbling and motivating to have that kind of impact.”

Karen Tegan Padir has spent her career proving her third-grade teacher wrong.

Padir, vice president of enterprise Java platforms for Sun Microsystems Inc., was told as a third-grade pupil in Melrose that she was good in math — for a girl. When her mother (also a teacher) explained the remark, Padir heard for the first time the bias against females pursuing technical studies.

“It wasn’t until that time that I thought about it,” she said. “It never entered my mind that math wasn”t an option.”

It would become more than an option. Math and technology turned out to become Padir’s life’s work — but not her life.

In the late 1980s, she was one of only two female computer science students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, enduring the 7-to-1 overall male-to-female ratio and the higher profile that it naturally caused.

Yet she took that situation and turned it to her advantage, showing teachers her competence.

“If you work hard, which I did, it’s like advertising, because all the professors recognize you and know you,” she said.

At Sun Microsystems, Padir manages about 700 employees worldwide. The enterprise Java platforms group makes up about 13 percent of the company’s software division and generates about 30 percent of Sun’s total software revenue, Sun officials said.

Since 1993, Padir, 38, has spent all but one year at Sun Microsystems. From 2004 to 2005 she was vice president of engineering of infrastructure technologies at Red Hat Inc., responsible for the company’s identity-management products, including directory and certificate server products.

Padir said she’s always enjoyed figuring out how things work. The decision to study computer science enabled her to explore new technologies while becoming self-sufficient, something she called a “core value” taught early on by her parents.

“It was really about finding a way to earn an income,” she said.

After studying at WPI, Padir spent four years as a software engineer at Marlborough-based Stratus Computer Inc. Then on to Sun, where she was initially a technical support engineer, working with customers.

Padir eventually missed building products and moved to the Java software division from 1996 to 2004 before the one-year hitch at Red Hat.

Back at Sun, company officials have given up asking her to move to their California headquarters — Padir has made it clear that’s not a consideration. It may prevent her from attaining a C-suite position with Sun, but remaining close to home is well worth it, she said.

“To me, my family and being a person who is native to New England is more important than my job,” Padir said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have the job I have today.”

When she was 7 years old, Angela Zapata collected bugs and examined them under a microscope in her native Colombia. Those first brushes with field science led to a lifetime career.

Today Zapata, 36, is a principal scientist at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, where she develops miniature chemical and biological detection systems for medical diagnosis, environmental monitoring, space exploration and homeland security. Despite two patents on her résumé and top-secret clearance from the U.S. Department of Defense, Zapata is humble. “I consider myself more of an explorer than a scientist,” Zapata said.

In January, Zapata was promoted from senior scientist to principal scientist at Draper for her work on developing autonomous medical devices and sensors designed to detect E. coli in water sources. She leads a multidisciplinary team of mechanical, electrical and software engineers.

As the principal investigator of research projects sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and private pharmaceutical companies, colleagues say Zapata is an enthusiastic and dedicated leader. She is well recognized in the field for her work in bacteria classification and analyzing the effects of radiation on ionic solutions.

One of her patents, a technology to detect biomarkers, has made it to market and is now licensed by Bedford-based Sionex Corp.

Zapata joined Draper in 2000 but dropped to part-time status to develop a high school biotechnology curriculum for The Rindge School of Technical Arts in Cambridge.

With the blessing of her supervisors at Draper, Zapata threw herself into teaching and developed a four-year biotech program for the students — only the second of its kind in Massachusetts.

Angela taught more than 75 high school students during her tenure at Rindge. In 2004, she led a winning team of students who competed for a NASA research project known as the Space Flight Opportunities Competition. Zapata traveled with the team to Maryland, where students worked with NASA engineers, she said.

“So far, teaching has been my most challenging career event,” said Zapata.

Zapata graduated magna cum laude from Worcester State College with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. She spent five years as a research assistant in the chemistry department while earning a doctoral degree in analytical chemistry from Tufts University.

She said she is involved in initiatives at Draper to recruit and retain women scientists and engineers. Zapata hopes the upward trend she sees in women’s participation the fields at Draper continues.

In the meantime Zapata said she plans to encourage women to gravitate toward, rather than shy away from, science and technology careers.