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 | March 21, 2008, Engineering Education Blog: March is Women's History Month. In this blog, I highlight some of our blogs on womenÕs contributions to engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship. Women Engineers, Computer Scientists and Inventors. |
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| December 10, 2007, I was honored to receive the MEGSCO Graduate Student Mentoring Award at the Mechanical Engineering holiday party. |
| Click. Build. Learn. Digital K-12 Engineering Courses Expand with Stress on Quality, Fun. Article in ASEE Prism, September 2007, Vol. 17 (1). That honor is embodied in a recent major partnership between TE and Engineering Pathway (EP), the comprehensive digital engineering education library based at the University of California at Berkeley. According to Sullivan, TE will by no means lose its identity but rather will exist as a stand-alone collection within EP. "This partnership with Pathway is a good thing, because it will increase access and traffic to TE," she says. Alice M. Agogino, the Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering who heads Pathway, considers TE the library's premier collection. "There's great synergy here," she says. The partnership with TE "makes us more attractive for professional societies." |
Adrian Agogino, a research scientist with the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) at NASA Ames, and NASA researcher Kagan Tumer received the best paper award at the 2007 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems. Their paper, titled "Distributed Agent-Based Air Traffic Flow Management," shows how learning agents can be used to set the separation required along individual aircraft routes to reduce air traffic congestion. This study made use of software developed at NASA Ames called the Future Air Traffic Management Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET), which won NASA's 2006 Software of the Year Award. FACET's innovative architecture provides a flexible and highly adaptable simulation and modeling environment, while at the same time offering the performance and reliability required for development and evaluation of air traffic management algorithms. The resulting system is highly efficient, portable, and extensible, and FACET has been installed at several airline operation centers and is being modified for use by the Federal Aviation Administration.The paper was also presented at UC Berkeley's course in Optimal Design, Jan. 30. 2007. Download slides. Also see news item from University of Texas at Austin on the award.
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But Sandhu has always been willing to roll up his sleeves, Agogino said. When the lab was working to protect migrant workers in central California from repeated pesticide poisoning, Sandhu decided to stay the night with a family in the affected town to fully analyze their real-world situation." In Mongolia, Sandhu is drawing on the so-called human-centered design approach of Agogino's Berkeley lab, a bottom-up philosophy that begins the design process in communities, not in concrete rooms. "We discover their needs and then match those needs to the best solution," Agogino explained. That field-first approach might sound like an obvious methodology, but it's not usually what happens. "There's so much bull sometimes with all that technology can do for the poor and starving in the third world," Agogino said, referring to cases in which technologists formulate solutions based on a largely theoretical approach. "But that's not always appropriate for rural environments. (Sandhu) really understands that." |
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 | "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering" by the National Academy was released on Monday, September 18, 2006. The report was produced by the Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering and commissioned by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEP). The Press Release was held by the Committee's Chair, Donna E. Shalala, President of the University of Miami and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration. The report was dedicated to the memory of Denice Dee Denton. Here are the power point slides used for the press release. |
| As a co-author and member of the Committee, I was interviewed and quoted in an article in Newsweek titled Science and the Gender Gap as part of the magazine's package of stories on women and leadership. "Until the mid-1990s, most women scientists were on their own as they tried to work around these barriers. "When I was in graduate school," says ALICE AGOGINO, A PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AT BERKELEY, "people would say there was no gender in science, no ethnicity in science. There's just good science. I was intimidated by this, but then I realized it isn't true." Gender, many women scientists say, shows up in everything from whether you work with the professor of your choice to how much lab space you get." . . . "Beyond the support the female students provide for each other, Berkeley (like other campuses, including Georgia Tech) tries to help by offering new "family friendly" policies like tenure-clock extension after the birth of a child, reduced teaching duties for new parents and a part-time option. "I think we're on the cutting edge," says Agogino." Also in UCBerkeleyNews, 18 September 2006. Ruth Simmons, President of Brown University and member of the Committee, was featured on the Today Show based on the Newsweek article and the National Academy report. | 
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| The report received quite a bit of news coverage. Donna Shalala and the report were covered by NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Shalala also spoke on the Jim Lehrer Hour on September 19. Even Rush Limbaugh is rumoured to have commented on this report in his broadcast on September 19, not that I actually listened to him. Other press articles include: New York Times Bias Is Hurting Women in Science, Panel Reports; The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (from the Associated Press release) Gender still hinders women scientists; and Reuters News Study finds U.S. bias against women in science "Women are being filtered out of high-level science, math and engineering jobs in the United States, and there is no good reason for it, according to a National Academies report released on Monday. A committee of experts looked at all the possible excuses -- biological differences in ability, hormonal influences, childrearing demands, and even differences in ambition -- and found no good explanation for why women are being locked out." The Scientist published NAS issues report on gender bias Inter-institution cooperation is needed to improve the climate for women in academic science, the report states. Fox News Gender Still Hinders Women Scientists "Gender bias -- not any biological difference between the sexes -- stifles the careers of female scientists at the nation's universities, says a new report that calls for wide-ranging steps to level the playing field. The study is the latest since Harvard University's president ignited controversy last year by suggesting that innate gender differences may partly explain why fewer women than men reach top university science jobs. The comment eventually cost him his job. Four times more men than women who hold doctorates in science and engineering have full-time faculty positions, the National Academy of Sciences reported Monday. Minority women are virtually absent from leading tenured positions." The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote "National Academies Panel Blames Biases for Women's Underrepresentation in Science and Mathematics". NetworkWorld Women not getting a fair shake at research universities. Harvard Crimson No Innate Gender Difference. CBS News Women Scientists Face Bias Study Says Steps Needed To Level Playing Field At Colleges, Universities, WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2006. American Council on Education publishes Research Universities Need to Eliminate Barriers Against Women in Science and Engineering; 'The report urges immediate reform and decisive action by university administrators, professional societies, government agencies and Congress to eliminate institutional gender bias." The report has also received attention from the International Press as well: NAS issues report on Gender Bias from indymedia Ireland "Inter-institution cooperation is needed to improve the climate for women in academic science, the report states"; Barrieres voor betavrouwen in VS; Nieuwsbank: Interactief Nederlands persbureau "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Dream of Women in Academic..."; International Herald Tribute; and The China Daily, Study finds U.S. bias against women in science. Also see the press list initially compiled by Laurel Haak at the National Research Council. |
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The Industrial Design Society of America featured some of Agogino's ME290P class projects in their Spring 2005 issue of Innovation. The student designs featured were VinPod Crop Protection System, with Joe Ulrich, Thomas Cauley, Alex Do, Brian Sosnowchik, and Martin White, Bike Thieves SOL with Barry Chubrik, Remy Labesque, Nathan Pletcher, and Adam Rineck, MetroMule with Samir Mehta, Grason Ott, Joanna Moanders, and Ruth Wan, and SnoBunny with Matthew Gale, Jesse Herrick, Gauri Sharma, and Dror Shimshowitz. See Innovation article for photos and article. Download poster for tradeshow (2 MB) here. |
