Women in Engineering (February 2016)

DiscoverE is leading the charge for Girl Day or “Introduce a Girl to Engineering” day on Thursday, February 25. This year’s focus is on engineers and engineering students as role models to show young girls “how creative engineering is and how engineers are changing our world.” A great example of what the engineering community is doing and can do is the “Girl Day at UT Austin.”

This event will take place on Saturday, February 27, at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the event’s web page, “over 5,000 elementary and middle school students are expected to participate with more than 900 volunteers and 100 student organizations, community organizations and companies volunteering.” The Texas Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, at UT-Austin, will host an experiment room for attendees at this year’s Girl Day and members of the Tau Beta Pi Central Texas Alumni Chapter have also been invited out to take part.

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Yvonne Chen, Ph.D. (CA G ’04), has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, the agency’s highest honor for faculty members at the start of their research and teaching careers. Dr. Chen is an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. The research grant will support her “research on engineering tumor-specific T cells for cancer immunotherapy.”

Dr. Chen joined UCLA in 2013, after receiving her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Caltech, completing postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, and earning her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University. Read the announcement article for more information on her research.

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The Los Alamos Daily Post (NM) is reporting that Jill S. Tietjen, P.E. (VA A ’76), will be the keynote speaker at a community dinner presenting on “Women in Los Alamos History.” Ms. Tietjen is a well-known speaker on the topic of gender issues in the work place, and a motivational speaker for young women working toward educations and careers in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM). The goals of this visit are to provide information to northern NM educators about methods for encouraging young women to enter and stay in STEM fields, and to make use of Ms. Tietjen’s expertise in developing solutions for improving gender equality at LANL.

Her lecture will begin at 6:40pm at the Los Alamos Golf Course Clubhouse on Thursday, March 3. Click here for the article, more details on Ms. Tietjen, and instructions to RSVP.

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