Category: Women in EEE

New connections

The start of a new academic year in EEE is a great opportunity for our Women in Electrical Engineering Society to welcome new students and make new connections.

WiEE Meeting - Alex presenting

by Alex Dhayaa (WiEE President)

On Wednesday 5th October, Women in Electrical Engineering Society (WiEE) held a lunch for all the girls in the department.

The lunch began with Alex Dhayaa introducing the society and our aims and vision for it this year. Alex’s talk was followed by Professor Kristel Fobelets’ motivating and empowering speech to the girls about being willing to speak up and stand out.

With our new freshers eager to make friends and get to know each other, we had an ice-breaker activity called ‘Speed Dating’! Everyone got up on their feet and had the chance to meet other girls from different year groups and make new connections.

After plenty of chatting, it was time for lunch! With a selection of sushi, sandwiches, and delicious, sweet treats to choose from, the girls helped themselves, buffet-style, and walked around the room continuing to chat and make new friends.

Overall, the event was a big hit! We can’t wait to put on many more events so we can work towards creating a strong and safe environment for all the girls in electrical engineering!

 

Woman @ Imperial Week

By Kate Highnam

The EEE Department and IEEE Student Branch celebrated International Women’s Day with a series of panels to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM.

The first event was our new inaugural Professor Maria Petrou Panel, featuring individuals from undergraduate through faculty within our department. In summary, there were two major areas highlighted by the panel: “chance” encounters and unconscious bias. Although the former seems like a serendipitous event, they can  only occur when we take the first step to join the STEM communities. The latter came up while discussing how all minorities suffer from unconscious bias and going through some training on it improves the respect of all within the community, as well as our own self-reflection.

The second event brought together four guest speakers from diverse fields and unique professional experiences in a roundtable setting. Amidst their powerful personal stories, these women conveyed their continuous struggle with imposter syndrome and tactics to combat it before it can impede their progress. They reminded the audience that you are not alone in your struggle (everyone feels imposter syndrome) and that, no matter what others say, you deserve to be here because you had to show up at the starting line to go anywhere. It was encouraging to see how they all mentioned immense support from their organisations and friends through any hardships. As for addressing how to increase the number of women in STEM, they recommended encouraging girls from a young age by continuously remind them that it is hard work to succeed, so keep trying!

Photo gallery

Christy and PriyaUndergraduates Christy Chan and Priya Chhaya present how women in Imperial EEE and EIE support each other. They also mentioned their own technical achievements: Christy is developing a novel recommender system for skincare products based on chemical composition; Priya works across three departments to advance the efficacy of PCR testing.

Postgraduate Dafni Antotsiou presents her background going from industry, where she worked as a Research Software Engineer on X-ray inspection in heavy industry, to Imperial, focusing on imitation learning with hand gestures.

PanelWe hosted four incredible women in STEM from both industry and academia: Dr. Jelena Ponocko (Lecturer at the University of Manchester), Dr. Yaprak Eminaga (Field Application Engineer at Intel), Alicia Blatiak (Postgraduate Candidate in EEE and CEO of Intelliflex), and Dr. Aizaan Anwar (Postgraduate in EEE and physician).

KristelDr. Kristel Fobelets talked us through her impressive career traversing multiple fields and the decisions that brought her to where she is now. She also told us of her “chance encounters” with Prof. Maria Petrou (the first female professor in EEE) and Ambassador Yvette Stevens (the first female engineer in Sierra Leone), along with other technical collaborators that enhanced her experience in STEM. As Dr. Jeremy Pitt added to the panel later, although it may seem to be pure chance to encounter these individuals that progress our careers, they could only happen to those who take the first step!

BagelsCo-organiser and Professor Maria Petrou PhD Scholarship winner Semina Mertzani sets up the platters for our first IWD event of 2022. She later starts the first event by discussing female inspirations that brought her to STEM.

 

 

A huge thank you to all our brilliant women, and everyone who organised, took part in and attended these events!

 

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: May Tang

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all.

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

May Tang is a technician in our department’s Teaching Laboratory. She is a member of the skilled and busy team  helping deliver our teaching experiments and supporting student projects. During the pandemic, when all teaching was suddenly remote, our lab technicians were recognised as engineering heroes who ensured thousands of pieces of kit were assembled and dispatched to hundreds of our students across the world, but May has an #EngineeringHero of her own.. (more…)

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: Esther Perea Borobio

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all.

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

Esther Perea Borobio is Principal Teaching Fellow in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, responsible for the essential professional engineering skills strand of our undergraduate courses. She began her career in mechanical engineering and industrial design and had over 10 years’ experience in a variety of industries before moving into academia. (more…)

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: Kristel Fobelets

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all.

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

Dr Kristel Fobelets is a Reader in Microelectronics and our Director of Undergraduate Studies. She is also a member of Senate. Cycling, gardening and knitting are among her hobbies – and she has found a way to combine knitting with electronic engineering in one of her current projects: wearable vests which can measure and monitor a patient’s breathing. (more…)

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: Swetha Lakshminarayanan

Wednesday 23rd June is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all. 

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

Swetha Lakshminarayanan is a third year student on our MEng Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree course. Outside of life in EEE, Swetha practises karate — she’s the secretary of the Shotokan Karate society at Imperial, and also makes time to swim and play piano. (more…)

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: Alicia Blatiak

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all.

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

Alicia Blatiak is a PhD student with a background in renewable energy consultancy for solar and offshore wind. Alicia’s research focuses on Electric Vehicles and how to use their energy to support the electricity grid. As one of our PhD student representatives, Alicia has been active in bringing together staff and students during the lockdown, helping organise a series of virtual chats with our academic staff to share their research and get to know what inspires them. (more…)

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: Maëlle Guerre

Wednesday 23rd June is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all. 

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

Maëlle Guerre is a third year undergraduate student on our Electronic and Information Engineering (EIE) course, with a interest in FPGAs and Machine Learning. Maëlle is a STEM mentor for Imperial College, and has recently developed a COVID app which is being used in schools. (more…)

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: Christy Chan

Wednesday 23rd June is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all. 

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

Christy Chan is an undergraduate student on our Electronics and Information Engineering (EIE) degree course, which has been described by our students as the subject to take if you want to become the next “Iron Man” — with the skills to build the hardware and to program it. She is President of the Women in Computing Society, and is very active in international sport. (more…)

International Women in Engineering Day 2021: Niloufar Raeis-Hosseini

Wednesday 23rd June is the 8th global annual celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, an international campaign of visibility on social media, that aims to shine a light on our diverse engineering role models, and encourage more people to consider engineering as a profession for all. 

This year, women students and staff from EEE have been sharing their journey into engineering and their proudest achievements, along with some words of advice to girls and young women who are thinking about a career in STEM.

Dr Niloufar Raeis-Hosseini is an Honorary Research Fellow in our Circuits and Systems group, creating tiny electronic devices — memristors — that can store and process information. Packing ultra-fast processing power in a smaller area, with less power consumption, will enable countless future applications like Internet-of-Things computing or smart medical implants. (more…)