1936, finishing in the top three of her class. She went to work for Chrysler where in 1938 she became the first woman to graduate with a masters in engineering from the Chrysler Institute of Engineering and was the first woman automotive engineer at Chrysler. Beatriz Ghirelli graduated as a Mechanical and Electrical Engineer in 1938, the first woman to graduate in the subject from National University of La Planta, and the second woman in Argentina to earn the qualification. In 1939, Isabel Gago graduated from Lisbon's Instituto Superior Técnico, one of the first two women to graduate in the field of chemical engineering in Portugal. She was the second woman to graduate and then work in engineering in Portugal (the first was Maria Amélia Chaves, the first woman to graduate in civil engineering) . Gago was the first woman to teach chemical engineering, spending her career at her alma mater. 1940s World War II engineering programs for women The entry of the United States into World War II created a serious shortage of engineering talent in that country as men were drafted into the armed forces at the same time that industry ramped up production of armaments, battleships, and airplanes. The U.S. Office of Education initiated a series of courses in science and engineering that were open to women as well as men. Private programs for women included GE on-the-job engineering training for women with degrees in mathematics and physics, and the Curtiss-Wright Engineering Program had Curtiss-Wright Cadettes (e.g., Rosella Fenton). The company partnered with Cornell, Penn State, Purdue, the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas, RPI, and Iowa State University to create an engineering curriculum that eventually enrolled over 600 women. The course lasted ten months and focused primarily on aircraft design and production. Thelma Estrin (1924–2014), who would later become a pioneer in the fields of computer science and biomedical engineering, took a 1942 three-month engineering assistant course at Stevens Institute of Technology and earned University of Wisconsin BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees. Through an accelerated program brought on by the war, Lois Graham (1925-2013) graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1946 and was the first woman in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology (M.S. ME ’49, Ph.D. ’59). Postwar era In 1943, the United States Army authorized a secret project at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore