Kudos to two women with ties to Hawaii island who picked up Nobel Prize awards this week. Jennifer A. Doudna, a Hilo High grad — now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley — shared the Nobel for chemistry for developing CRISPR-cas9, a “molecular scissors” that can be used to change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms, enabling genes editing to remove errors that lead to disease.

And astronomer Andrea Ghez, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been using the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea since 1995, shared the Nobel for physics for discovery of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way galaxy. Both breakthroughs are an inspiration — especially for girls pursuing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) studies.