In 1922, Marguerite Massart graduated from the Université Libre de Bruxelles with a degree in civil engineering, making her the first woman to qualify as an engineer in Belgium. She later set up a successful foundry business in Ghent and introduced a desalinisation project and early solar panels in the first hotel on Sal Island in Cape Verde. Hélène Mallebrancke was the first female Belgian civil engineering graduate from University of Ghent, later keeping the Allied telecommunications networks in the Ghent region operational against huge odds during World War Two for which she was decorated posthumously by both the French government and the Belgian authorities.
