Reception Sponsor: Autodesk

We are pleased to share that Autodesk will be one of three sponsors of the Grad Student Reception at WE19! We’ve all heard of them, now here’s your chance to speak to their representatives in person!

Reminder: the Grad Student reception will take place on Friday, November 9, from 5-6:30 PM in the Anaheim Marriott in Grand Ballroom E. Mark your conference calendars!

From our sponsor:

Autodesk makes software for people who make things. If you’ve ever driven a high-performance car, admired a towering skyscraper, used a smartphone, or watched a great film, chances are you’ve experienced what millions of Autodesk customers are doing with our software. 

Join Autodesk and help shape the future.  Visit Autodesk’s career site to view open opportunities.  Curious about #AutodeskLife? Check us out on social media: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn!

This blog is moving!

This blog is moving to http://gradswe.swe.org/gradswe-blog! Starting tonight, go there to continue reading all the same content you usually see here!

We are consolidating our websites, so in addition to the blog, http://gradswe.swe.org also has all of our other information such as social media / joining links, leadership team information, and our FAQ!

IMPORTANT: Early bird registration deadline for WE19 is tomorrow, 10/15

This is just a quick reminder that early bird registration for WE19 is tomorrow, October 15. Late and onsite registration will still be available, though at a much higher cost.

Annual conference is the absolute best opportunity for professional development available to female engineers. Do not miss out on this fantastic experience! In addition to the general programming, there will be lots of graduate student-focused content and events. We’ll post more about that closer to conference!

Here is a link to register. Feel free to reach out to the GradSWE Programming team (gradsweprogramming@gmail.com) if you have any questions/concerns about conference!

Graduate Member Spotlight: Pratyasha Mohapatra

Graduate Member Spotlight

Pratyasha Mohapatra

Third Year PhD Student

Materials Science and Engineering

Iowa State University

We are excited to welcome Pratyasha to the GradSWE Leadership Team as our FY20 International Graduate Team Lead. As the IGTL, she aims to work to develop resources for professional development and improved networking among international graduate students.  Pratyasha has been involved in the GradSWE leadership at Iowa State University (ISU) section since 2018 and has served as the Director of Events Committee in the past. One of her major efforts have been to organize professional development and social events designed for graduate students and promote participation in the GradSWE group. She has been instrumental in setting up the social media presence and promotion for the ISU GradSWE group which lead to a ten-fold increase in member participation.  Pratyasha is currently serving as the leader of the Grad SWE group at ISU. In this vital role, Pratyasha aims to continue to provide a platform for women graduate engineers to exchange ideas, freely discuss their difficulties, celebrate their achievements together, and encourage other young women to pursue STEM careers.

Pratyasha is pursuing doctoral research in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University. Presently in the third year of her Ph.D., she focuses on developing novel antiferroelectric ceramic materials for high energy density capacitor applications by powder processing techniques. Her work is directed towards developing new strategies to investigate the cause and mitigate hysteresis loss in ferroelectric/antiferroelectric dielectric ceramics to improve energy efficiency. She also completed her Master’s degree at Iowa State University in Materials Science and Engineering, where her research focused on the synthesis of colloidal nanoparticles like silicon, silicon dioxide, and thin-film synthesis using plasma processing.   

This year Pratyasha also completed a four-month summer internship at Intel Corporation where she worked on Surface Mount Technology development. She has been working on developing metrology for testing flow and adhesion characteristics for package-board underfill adhesive materials, for upcoming Intel components. She considers the experience as one of the most enriching ones during graduate school and a great insight to work in the industry.

Apart from her research, she loves photography, sketching, traveling and cooking. 

@pratyasha_m

Preparing for a Symposium Presentation

I recently gave a presentation at a symposium and my advisors gave me some helpful tips as I practiced my talk, that I thought would be useful to share. Although some of the suggestions are obvious, some helped me view my overall message differently and improved my presentation. Some of their suggestions included:

• Have one major idea per slide. Any text that does not directly support this major idea should be removed.
• For every bullet of text, have one corresponding image. Have 2-3 images per slide.
• Highlighting your take home message on every slide, or at least on the most important slides will keep the audience from getting lost. One way to highlight a message is by creating a “bumper sticker” that is emphasized over the rest of the slide.
• Repeat your application and end goal of your research multiple times throughout your presentation. Reminding the audience, the why behind what you’re doing will keep them interested.
• Add notations to all graphics. All images should have a brief note telling the audience what they are looking at. Too much text here is not helpful.
• If you don’t have time to say all of the text on your slide, your audience won’t have time to read it.
• Incorporation of pictures and videos can more clearly depict an idea than text.

The first two bullet points were most useful to me. I found that I often added extra information to the slide because that piece of data was particularly difficult to obtain. However, the inclusion of this extra information just added unnecessary work for the audience without supporting my overall message. My presentation became much clearer after identifying a main point for each slide. My message became further directed by limiting my text to relate directly to an image, so that any text on the slide was more useful and relevant.

I hope these tips are helpful in preparing for presentations. Please let me know in the comments below!   

Graduate Member Spotlight: Amy Zheng

Amy Zheng

Ph.D.

Chemical Engineering

Expected Graduation Date: 2021

Vanderbilt University

 

         This is Amy Zheng’s second year serving as our Development Mentoring Coordinator, where she provides content for our mentoring teams so they remain engaged throughout the year. Amy has held several leadership positions in SWE prior to joining the GradSWE team. As an undergraduate student, she was President of the University of Kansas section. For three years, she served as the Graduate Student Coordinator at the University of Kansas, building the bridge between undergraduate and graduate students at her campus. As Graduate Student Coordinator, Amy established an annual seminar where faculty and graduate students could advertise their research opportunities to undergrads. She attended the SWE Region I conference in 2013 and the annual SWE conferences in 2015 and 2016. 

Outside of SWE, Amy is the social chair of the Chemical Engineering Graduate Student Association. In this position, Amy plans monthly departmental happy hours and organizes the recruitment weekend activities for prospective Ph.D. students. Amy is also passionate about spreading her love of science. She has volunteered at several organizations around the Vanderbilt campus to teach public school students about engineering and science. 

This year, Amy is a recipient of the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Her thesis title is: Genome-Scale Optimization of Energy Flux through Compartmentalized Metabolic Networks in a Model Photosynthetic Eukaryotic Microbe.

The goal of Amy’s work is to optimize the production of biofuel in diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum (Pt) by using metabolic flux analysis. Metabolic flux analysis is a tool that combines experimental and computational methods to understand the metabolism of an organism. By applying this tool to Pt, Amy is able to identify enzymes that can be deleted or overexpressed to increase biofuel production. This year, Amy’s work was recognized and she won a travel award for the International Society of Photosynthetic Research (ISPR) meeting. After graduating, Amy plans to pursue a job in research, and is open to both academia and industry. 

         Outside of work, Amy enjoys cooking and traveling. She is currently trying to master eggs benedict.  Amy also enjoys doing zumba!

 Fun Fact from Amy: Amy can do a split!

Real World Data

Not all of us would say that our profession is “data scientist,” but most (if not all) of us deal with some sort of data. Knowing how to deal with real world data is important, though not talked about. Here is a summary of my advice on how to deal with practical, real world data.

• quickly examine the data
  • try a grid of histograms for numerical data
    • look out for unexpected distributions or outliers
    • make sure data is in the right format
    • check for measurement errors
  • try bar plots for categorical data
• look for errors in the data
  • only remove outliers if you have a legitimate reason that it is suspicious – the readings for the hole in the ozone layer was first ignored as an outlier!
  • check for correct naming conventions, missing data, duplicates, truncation, and formatting (especially dates)
• fill in missing values
  • not recommended to just drop or infer missing values
  • for categorical data, try simply adding another category for “missing”
  • for numerical data, try adding a “missing” flag, then filling in the data with 0
  • this will let your model decide what to do with missing data – maybe being missing is itself a hint!

Hopefully this reminder will help us all with our current data. Next, we can work on fixing the bias in the data!

Get recognized for your contribution to SWE. Apply for WE Local Awards!

Are you looking for ways for you or your collegiate/graduate group to be acknowledged for your contribution toward SWE? Do you consider yourself a remarkable individual who deserves recognition for your involvement with the SWE community?

To recognize your efforts, WE Locals 2020 offers a number of awards with much of the flavor of the Society-level awards program. The application period for WE Local Awards will run until September 30. Recipients will have the ability to choose at which WE Local they accept their award. Download the new WE Local Awards packet explaining the nomination process. Watch the WE Local Awards Training Session to know more about the submission. Questions can be directed to awards@swe.org.

Check out some of the awards you might be interested in here:

SWE Collegiate Member Awards

The Guiding Star Award recognizes SWE exceptional collegiate leaders with at least two (2) years of SWE membership at the end of the previous fiscal year who have made outstanding contributions to SWE, the engineering community, their campus, and the community. A maximum of fifteen (15) awards will be presented annually.

The Rising Star Award recognizes SWE collegiate members with less than 2 years of SWE membership at the end of the previous fiscal year who have made outstanding contributions to SWE, the engineering community, their campus, and the community. A maximum of fifteen (15) awards will be presented annually.

Group Awards

GradSWE Groups can apply as an independent group or as part of their school’s section too! Any group of Collegiate or Professional SWE members that support the SWE mission are eligible for these awards. This can include a SWE Section, SWE Affiliate (including community college affiliate groups and sections), Members At Large, Affinity Group, Corporate Employee Resource Group (ERG), or other group of SWE members.

The Outstanding Outreach Event Award recognizes a group or groups who plan and carry out a high-quality outreach event to inspire future engineers. A maximum of twelve (12) awards will be presented annually, two each to small, medium, and large professional sections or groups and two each to small, medium, and large collegiate sections or groups.

The Outstanding Professional Development Event Award recognizes a group or groups who plan and carry out a high-quality professional development event to help women achieve their professional goals. A maximum of twelve (12) awards will be presented annually, two each to small, medium, and large professional sections or groups and two each to small, medium, and large collegiate sections or groups.

The Joint Professional/Collegiate Event Award is jointly bestowed upon a professional SWE Group and a Collegiate SWE group who have planned and implemented a joint SWE event between the two groups. A maximum of five (5) awards may be presented annually.

NOTE that, if you win a WE Local award, you are still eligible to apply for a SWE individual award in the same fiscal year (including a SWE award that corresponds to the same WE Local award). If you have previously won an individual SWE award, you are then ineligible to win the corresponding WE Local Award.

Get recognition for your individual and group efforts! Let the WE Local conferences help celebrate your success and accomplishments. Apply for the WE Local Awards by September 30 2019 11:59 PM CDT.

 

Be a WE Local Speaker, Deadline is Approaching!

Do you want to share your insights and expertise on a platform like the WE Local Conferences? The Call for Participation (CFP) is still open for 2020 WE Local Conferences in Buffalo NY or Des Moines IA. Submit an abstract before Monday, September 23  at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Click on the conference city below to apply to speak at WE Local.

• WE Local Buffalo
• WE Local Des Moines

You can read more about the WE Local Attendee Desired Content Topics of learn more about CFP guidelines and best practices here. Do you have session ideas or want to submit an abstract and don’t know how to get started? GradSWE held a brainstorming call on July 22, but you can still reference the resources shared by accessing the agenda available here. If you have any questions about WE Locals or would like feedback on a potential submission, please contact GrdaSWE WE Local Liaison Kazi Tasneem.

The deadline for submitting an abstract is quickly approaching, and GradSWE wants to see contents from graduate students! Apply and join us for the 2020 WE Local Conferences! Submit an abstract to speak at WE Local in Buffalo or Des Moines before Monday, September 23, 2019.

Graduate Member Spotlight: Josey McBrayer

Josey McBrayer

Ph.D.

Chemical Engineering

Expected Graduation Date: December 2020

University of Utah

Although new to the GradSWE Leadership Team, Josey McBrayer is no stranger to SWE leadership.  Throughout her career at the University of New Mexico, Josey was involved in their SWE section holding the positions of treasurer and president. Upon entering graduate school, she continued her involvement in SWE as the graduate student representative at the University of Utah. We are excited to have Josey join the Leadership Team this year as the Graduate Assessment Mentoring Coordinator! She will be working on matching graduate students to professional mentors as well as revamping the mentoring program application forms.

Josey’s work both in SWE and in research has resulted in her being awarded both at the University of New Mexico as well as at the University of Utah.  While in undergrad she was awarded the University of New Mexico School of Engineering’s Outstanding Leader in 2017 and the University of New Mexico School of Engineering’s Outstanding Senior for Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2016. These awards recognize Josey’s leadership as president of SWE and her scholastic achievements in chemical engineering.  In graduate school, Josey was awarded the University of Utah College of Engineering’s Gregory B. McKenna Fellowship recipient which recognizes one first-year graduate student in the school of engineering for academic excellence. 

Thesis Topic: Alternative Anodes for Lithium Ion Batteries

Current, state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries are reaching their theoretical limits. One option for enhancing the energy density of lithium ion batteries is replacing the graphite anode with silicon. Silicon has up to 10x the energy density in comparison to graphite. Despite these benefits, silicon suffers from large volume expansion and a chemically and mechanically unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI). Josey’s research involves differentiating between the strain in the silicon and the SEI and quantifying the contributions of chemical and mechanical degradation.

Josey hopes to work as a staff scientist at a national lab after graduation and to continue research in the area of electrochemistry and energy storage.

Outside of work, Josey enjoys hiking, biking, zumba, dancing, and doing agility with her dog.

Fun Fact from Josey: Josey has two birds who mimic sounds and will give kisses on the cheek when asked