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WIE From Around the World: Applying Machine Learning to Health Care: Improving access for all

December 1, 2021 by Leslie Prives

Growing up in India, Dr. Jayashree Kalpathy-Cramer listened to her mother talk about her work as a physics professor who taught electronics, and it piqued her interest in engineering. She calls this a position of both privilege and good fortune, in that having a female role model so highly educated was not the norm. While at the time, the concept of education in India was seen as a ticket to a good life for anyone, Kalpathy-Cramer was in many ways a first-generation woman in her family to not have to fight for the opportunity.

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https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9600640

Lisa T. Su Wins 2021 IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal: She is the first woman to receive the honor

Congratulations are in order for Lisa T. Su, who was named recipient of the 2021 IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal, sponsored by Intel Corporation, at the start of this year. The president and CEO of AMD Technologies, Su is the first woman to receive this award, underscoring her innovation as an engineer and skills as a leader. Upon being bestowed with the honor, Su donated her cash prize of US$20,000 from the Noyce Medal to the IEEE Women in Engineering Fund through the IEEE Foundation.

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https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9600638

The Women of the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering: Providing networks to connect and thrive

As they round the corner into their fifth year of existence, the Women of the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering (VISE) (or WoV , as they refer to themselves) are taking stock of all they have achieved. Led by students at VISE in Nashville, Tennessee, and made up predominantly of Ph.D. students, the group’s goals are to foster community, discuss research, and promote the success of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. And they are well on their way to making their impact even larger.

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https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9600632

Sustaining Women in Technology: Hayashi continues to push boundaries

Kathy Herring Hayashi believes that, throughout their lives, people have different waves of time and energy to devote to personal and professional goals. Understanding this has allowed her to develop and adapt to her own timeline; when her children were young, she was a software consultant, which provided her with flexibility as a new mother. As they got older, she took on IEEE leadership, computer science teaching, and a full-time job, and most recently, used the extra time while staying at home during the pandemic to codevelop the SA-EDI standard.

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https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9600628

Leslie Prives

Leslie Prives is a freelance writer living in New York City.

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Filed Under: Past Columns / Departments Tagged With: Computer science, Education, IEEE Foundation, Leadership, Machine learning, Pandemics, Physics, Software, Standards, STEM, Surgery, Technological innovation

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About the Magazine

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine is the first magazine to focus on issues facing women who study or work in IEEE’s fields of interest.

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine strives to recognize women’s outstanding achievements in electrical and electronics engineering as well as enhance networking and to promote membership in IEEE Women in Engineering.

The publication also advocates for women in leadership roles and career advancement for women in STEM professions, and it facilitates the development of programs and activities that promote the entry into and retention of women in engineering programs.

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A Catalytic
Conversion


Twenty-three-year-old Alayna Westcom stood onstage in a white dress with a blue atom emblem, blue shoes, and lab glasses. On a table covered by a white tablecloth, she added hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide to a little soap and then stepped back to watch. “Don’t try this at home,” she teased as white foam erupted onto the stage. It was a catalytic decomposition reaction that goes by the nickname “elephant’s toothpaste.” The hydrogen peroxide rapidly decomposes into water and oxygen gas, and when the gas gets trapped in the soap, voilà—bubbles, and a huge shot of foam.

This was the 2015 Miss Vermont pageant, and Westcom was crowned the winner. She would perform this experiment again when she represented Vermont in the 2016 Miss America pageant. In both pageants, she was the first contestant to perform a science experiment as her talent. As Miss Vermont, she spent a year visiting all 251 cities and towns in her state under the platform “Success through STEM.” Her goal was to teach science to thousands of students in an entertaining and hands-on way. There’s not a lot of fun in science today, she feels, and this matters because that’s how her love of science began—by getting her hands dirty. Westcom’s parents bought her and her siblings a toy microscope when she was very little, and they used it to do things like look at the wings of bugs.

These were “kid things,” sure, but also entomologist activities. Then, all of her science classes in elementary and middle school were fun and interactive. They were always moving around the classroom—they built their own rollercoasters and dissected chicken wings to study muscle attachments and movements and then cooked some to eat. “So many of my teachers had an impact on my career in ways they will never know,” Westcom says. “They were always making sure we were learning and having fun at the same time.”

When she got to high school, Westcom was drawn to forensics and crime investigation. Prime-time crime dramas like CSI certainly helped drive that interest, but she enjoyed her forensics class so much that she decided to study forensic science in college. She received her bachelor’s degree from Bay Path University in Massachusetts and then continued on to earn a postbaccalaureate certificate in medical laboratory science. Today, Westcom works as an autopsy technician for the University of Vermont Medical Center and as a medical technologist at Northwestern Medical Center. That’s two jobs. And she’s studying to take the Medical College Admission Test. She often works a day shift at one job and then goes to the evening shift at the other, but she likes both—they’re different, unpredictable, and ensure she’s always learning. In the lab, it’s not unusual to see her sitting at a microscope looking at a peripheral blood smear or a wound culture smear, analyzing for abnormalities. Each day brings different cases, new diagnoses, and new people. No matter what, she still loves looking through the microscope.

“Miss”ing the Point
So, what’s it like to be Miss Vermont and a scientist? Well, you have to work extra hard to be taken seriously. Westcom knows what people are thinking when they tell her she doesn’t look like a scientist or that she’s too pretty to be a scientist, but unfortunately it doesn’t stop with just words. “I’ve found that more often than not, I’ve got to go above to prove that even though I look put together, I’m still smart and focused,” she says.
For some reason, it’s hard to convince people that there’s no connection between the two, that “looks don’t dictate intelligence,” Westcom explains, so she has this advice to all young women: ignore them. “Do not let others dictate how far you will go,” she advises. “Of course there are negative stereotypes out there but they do not need to apply to you.”

In other words, just believe in yourself and keep on moving. One tactic that Westcom believes makes this easier is finding women in science, technology, engineering, and math fields to serve as role models. “There are women who have been through so much, have been in your shoes, and know what it is like, and they are more than happy to see you succeed,” she says.

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IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine is published quarterly by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Headquarters: 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016-5997 USA.

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