Channing Hansen's "Thomas" is part of a series commemorating women's oft-overlooked contributions to the sciences. As the artist himself explained, "The idea [...] came to me after noticing how many people had unconsciously (or deliberately) gendered the medium of textiles as female. Science is (still!) rather absurdly gendered as male and its history is rife with examples of women whose contributions have been rendered invisible or were credited to male colleagues. This was my way of honoring them in the realm of art in a way that perhaps they had not been in their own field." The titles of these pieces pay tribute to female aerospace engineers of color who made significant contributions to the field through their work with NASA. Valerie Thomas invented the illusion transmitter, an aeronautical device still in use by NASA and for which she holds the patent.