Women engineers from the United States

"[The gay community can] fight for our rightful voice, or we can continue to … slap one another and one day find ourselves without the electoral base to sustain the voice we already have."

"We were fed up being harassed and strip-searched by the police, denied medical treatment, refused housing and even barred from using public bathrooms just because we were trans. We were tired of being beaten and murdered. So we went out and worked."

"The lack of political attention to candidates and issues, history has shown us, is a sure-fire way to end up left out of the policy debates altogether."

"We need to continue to educate our elected officials and candidates for office on who we are, what we need and why they should stand in solidarity with us."

"Our community is organized, it’s strong, it’s paying attention and it needs to ensure a place at the political table, now and for future generations of transgender leaders."

"We need to go back to the discovery, to posing a question, to having a hypothesis and having kids know that they can discover the answers and can peel away a layer."

"I am interested in the electronic, optical, magnetic, and transport properties of novel semiconductor systems. Of special interest are the behavior of magnetic polarons in semimagnetic and dilute magnetic semiconductors, and the optical response properties of semiconductor quantum-wells and superlattices. My interests also include quantum dots, mesoscopic systems, and the role of antiferromagnetic fluctuations in correlated 2D electron systems."

"Never let academics falter; you have to be successful to have authority to champion change"

"A conceptual level view of an object design describes the key abstractions. While someone might think of key abstractions as being nothing more or nothing less than high-level descriptions of "candidate classes", I prefer to consider a conceptual design from a slightly different angle--I'm thinking about design at a slightly different level. An object-oriented application is a set of interacting objects. Each object is an implementation of one or more roles. A role supports a set of related (cohesive) responsibilities. A responsibility is an obligation to perform a task or know certain information. And objects don't work in isolation, they collaborate with others in a community to perform the overall responsibilities of the application. So a conceptual view, at least to start, is a distillation of the key object roles and their responsibilities (stated at a fairly high level). More than likely (unless you form classification hierarchies and use inheritance and composition techniques) many candidates you initially model will map directly to a single class in some inheritance hierarchy. But I like to open up possibilities by think first of roles and responsibilities, and then as a second step towards a specification-level view, mapping these candidates to classes and interfaces."

"Frameworks are skeletal structures of programs that must be fleshed out to build a complete application. For example, a windowing system or a simulation system can both be viewed as frameworks fleshed out by a windowed application or a simulation, respectively."

"Frameworks are white boxes to those that make use of them. Application developers must be able to quickly understand the structure of a framework, and how to write code that will fit into the framework. Frameworks are reusable designs as well as reusable code."

"A subsystem is a set of classes (and possibly other subsystems) collaborating to fulfill a set of responsibilities. Although subsystems do not exist as the software executes, they are useful conceptual entities."

"Object-oriented programming languages support encapsulation, thereby improving the ability of software to be reused, refined, tested, maintained, and extended. The full benefit of this support can only be realized if encapsulation is maximized during the design process. We argue that design practices which take a data-driven approach fail to maximize encapsulation because they focus too quickly on the implementation of objects. We propose an alternative object-oriented design method which takes a responsibility-driven approach. We show how such an approach can increase the encapsulation by deferring implementation issues until a later stage."

"Object-oriented programming increases the value of these metrics by managing this complexity. The most effective tool available for dealing with complexity is abstraction. Many types of abstraction can be used, but encapsulation is the main form of abstraction by which complexity is managed in object-oriented programming. Programming in an object-oriented language, however, does not ensure that the complexity of an application will be well encapsulated. Applying good programming techniques can improve encapsulation, but the full benefit of object-oriented programming can be realized only if encapsulation is a recognized goal of the design process."

"The goal of is to improve encapsulation. It does so by viewing a program in terms of the client/server model."

"is inspired by the client/server model. It focuses on the contract by asking:"

"Responsibility-driven design specifies object behavior before object structure and other implementation considerations are determined. We have found that it minimizes the rework required for major design changes."

"Encapsulation is the key to increasing the value of such software metrics as reusability, refinability, testability, maintainability, and extensibility. Object-oriented languages provide a number of mechanisms for improving encapsulation, but it is during the design phase that the greatest leverage can be realized. The data-driven approach to object-oriented design focuses on the structure of the data in a system. This results in the incorporation of structural information in the definitions of classes. Doing so violates encapsulation. The responsibility-driven approach emphasizes the encapsulation of both the structure and behavior of objects. By focusing on the contractual responsibilities of a class, the designer is able to postpone implementation considerations until the implementation phase. While responsibility-driven design is not the only technique addressing this problem, most other techniques attempt to enforce encapsulation during the implementation phase. This is too late in the software life-cycle to achieve maximum benefits."

"Experienced object designers explore the design space from many different angles. They refine ideas of how their system should respond while they are in the middle of building and discarding ideas about how their design should work. Getting a design to gel involves making assumptions, seeing how they play out, changing one’s mind or perspective slightly and re-iterating. Design is a difficult, involved task. It inherently is a non-linear process. Yet, we are asked to trace our design results back to system requirements. And, if we uncover some implications during design, we’d like to tune our system requirements to reflect necessary design compromises."

"Use cases, scenarios or scripts are roughly synonymous terms for important ways to focus our design activities. I prefer the term use case (although quickly saying it three times can leave your tongue tied) because it emphasizes usage. A use case is a textual description of a sequence of interactions between an actor (roughly corresponding to an external agent or class of users) and the system we are designing. Use cases were first described by Ivar Jacobson in his book “Object Oriented Software Engineering A Use Case Driven Approach.” Use cases have been around in various forms for quite some time. Jacobson, however, made the keen observation that use cases can be treated as refineable, extensible and even reusable specifications of system requirements. We’ve had these same goals for object designs. We know that it is harder to actually accomplish them than it is to talk about them."

"Users can work with analysts and object designers to formulate and tune system requirements. People from business, analytical and object design disciplines can come together, learn from each other and generate meaningful descriptions of systems that are to be built. Each participant and each project has slightly different concerns and needs. Practical application of use cases can go a long way to improve our ability to deliver just what the customer ordered."

"The key books about object-oriented graphical modeling languages appeared between 1988 and 1992. Leading figures included Grady Booch [Booch,OOAD]; Peter Coad [Coad, OOA], [Coad, OOD]; Ivar Jacobson (Objectory) [Jacobson, OOSE]; Jim Odell [Odell]; Jim Rumbaugh (OMT) [Rumbaugh, insights], [Rumbaugh, OMT]; Sally Shlaer and Steve Mellor [Shlaer and Mellor, data], [Shlaer and Mellor, states] ; and Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (Responsibility Driven Design) [Wirfs-Brock]."

"The things which concerned him more than anything else were the what and the why--the what because he felt it was necessary to know absolutely what you were questioning and what you were doing or what concerned you, and then the why, the depth type of thinking which showed you the reason for doing the thing and would perhaps indicate clearly whether you should maintain what was being done or should change what was being done."

"Psychology of Management, as here used, means, the effect of the mind that is directing work upon that work which is directed, and the effect of this undirected and directed work upon the mind of the worker."

"... what is there in the subject of psychology to demand the attention of the manager?"

"Of what value is the study of management?"

"Management practitioners today largely ignore Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, possibly because the principles of motion study they pioneered are now very unfashionable. Motion study entailed the detailed examination of the movements individual workers made in the process of carrying out their work. It was, however, just one of the concepts the Gilbreths developed. Through Frank's concerns that the efficiency of employees should be balanced by an economy of effort and a minimisation of stress, and Lillian's interest in the psychology of management, their work laid the foundations for the development of the modern concepts of job simplification, meaningful work standards and incentive wage plans."

"One of the undesirable by-products of the factory system was the frequent abuse of unskilled workers, including children, who were often subjected to unhealthy working conditions, long hours, and low pay. The appalling conditions spurred a national anti-factory campaign. Led by Mary Parker Follett and Lillian Gilbreth, the campaign gave rise to the “human relations movement" advocating more humane working. Among other things, the human relations movement provided a more complex and realistic understanding of workers as people, instead of merely cogs in a factory machine."

"Years of research have gone in to kind of what the makeup should be of this ordnance gelatin to really represent what damage you would see in your soft tissues...this is currently considered kind of the state of the art."

"There are fragments in here. There's, kind of took a curve and came out. You can see a much larger area in terms of the fractures that are inside....It's exploded and it's tumbling. So what happens is, this particular round is designed to tumble and break apart....There's going to be a lot more damage to the tissues, both bones, organs, whatever gets kind of even near this bullet path. The bones aren't going to just break, they're going to shatter. Organs aren't just going to tear or have bruises on them, they're going to be, parts of them are going to be destroyed."

"Even though we'll be up here (in International Space Station) this year (2021), we have our space family. So I think we're going to create some of our own traditions and we'll be able to talk to our family on the ground."

"Data abstractions provide the same benefits as procedures, but for data. Recall that the main idea is to separate what an abstraction is from how it is implemented so that implementations of the same abstraction can be substituted freely."

"One of the 50 most important women in science"

"a key figure in the development of applications that run on distributed collections of computers"

"That’s what my journey taught me, that I could do really meaningful things in a positive way—so that the ‘how’ it was done was maybe even more important than the ‘what’."

"At a really early age, I started to learn by watching that aptitude and access are two different things. My mom wasn’t dumb—she was smart, but she didn’t have access to things for most of her life. With a little bit of access to education, she changed her circumstances."

"thumb|Megan Smith official portraitI’m a woman in motion,” Megan Smith says. “I feel like I’m always moving.” Whether the Camelback Village Racquet & Health Club fitness director is teaching a class, training a client, maintaining equipment or leading meetings at Village Health Clubs & Spas’ flagship, she has her gym bag – which doubles as a work bag – in tow. “I use the club as a member as well. I go to yoga classes, I play tennis and I use the childcare [service],” she says of the “community-driven” club. “We want to be people’s third space. We want to be like that second home that they can come [to] and feel welcome.”"

"I'm a Tar Heel born and bred. It was always my dream to play at North Carolina, and to now be the head coach feels like I'm coming home," Smith Lyon said. "I deeply appreciate the trust and confidence that Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham, Senior Associate AD Vince Ille and the Board of Trustees are showing by hiring me to lead this group of talented young women and welcoming me to the Tar Heel coaching family."

"I also want to thank my coach and mentor, Donna J. Papa. I'm grateful for all that she has done for the Carolina Softball program at the University during her amazing career, and I am humbled to have the opportunity to build on the foundation she has created."

"Thank you also to the Marshall administration and the city of Huntington, West Virginia, for being so supportive of our program over the past five years. The student-athletes in Marshall's softball program have done amazing things – and they will continue to do amazing things.""

"I visited the campus and talked to the coach," "I know a lot of players on the team and felt it was the perfect fit for me. It is also close to home which I'm excited about."

"“I’m a Tar Heel born and bred," Smith Lyon said in a press release. "It was always my dream to play at North Carolina, and now to be head coach feels like I’m coming home.""

"There was a communist revolution in 1974 and we were lucky enough to be able to flee the country. I was almost 10 when my sisters and I got out – our parents had left about seven months earlier because soldiers came to our house to try and arrest my father. They shot my dad that night."

"I definitely considered different career paths. As I kid, I knew that I liked math and science, and that was fun. But I also liked art and writing, as well as architecture and photography. I was kind of a student activist too, so was contemplating something in the government. It was a hard decision, but mostly I really enjoyed science and was good at it, so that’s what I chose."

"Statistically speaking, I am certain I have suffered from discrimination through my career. I’ve seen plenty of studies showing that men are awarded more research grants than women, that men are promoted more quickly than women and that men have higher salaries than women. I don’t think that I’m outside of the norm. And if we don’t believe that women are less capable, on average, than men, then by definition, I have been discriminated against."

"I hope that moms can see themselves in me and take that as permission to hold onto their own identity, dreams and passions — even after having children."

"The secret to so much success in life is to be okay with failure and have a good, healthy, positive relationship with failure."

"I want you to ask questions, make hypotheses, and test your ideas in the real world. Keep exploring anything and everything around you."

"It was surreal watching the movie"

"Someone actually got what went on and how I felt"

"As the first African American female graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering in 1961, I did not have a role model,” she writes in part. “I understand that requests are not few, and her contacts must be very limited. If there is a way that a meeting can be arranged or a sighting, I am very interested. … Knowing of her has been an inspiration to me."

"I could do a split, but another African American girl could do a flip,” she remembers. “There could only be one African American cheerleader, and I couldn’t do a flip, so that was that."

"Girls always come up here, but they never finish, and you won’t finish either.” Then he glanced at her hands and added: “Besides, you’re never going to be able to draw with those fingernails.”"

"Some of it may have been racial prejudice,” she says, “but they didn’t even have to get to racial because being a girl in engineering, being female, was enough"

"There’s always been magic in complex math calculations,” she says. “I used to think about problems all day long. Sometimes I solved the problems in my sleep. But then I would wake up and couldn’t think of what I did. So I trained myself to write down the solution immediately"

"Ultimately,” he adds, “if we are to maximize human potential, having a safe, welcoming environment is absolutely vital for knowledge generation and for learning. I’m certainly committed to making sure that the Swanson School and the University of Pittsburgh are the best places for individuals to come and do their best work"

"If we just take the default view today, people will be going to these places with an extractive mindset that says- I have the technology, money and power, and I’ll use these resources until I’m satisfied, and I will not be concerned with other countries and future generations."

"If we don't take a radical shift toward really prioritizing labor rights, it's quite concerning imagining having a company or a government controlling the full life support system on a space station or a physical base on a planet."

"Space truly is useful for sustainable development for the benefit of all peoples."

"That experience taught me about making decisions and to just keep going but to always maintain your dignity."

"I knew how to get out because I could read and I had to get out because the environment was dangerous."

"And, today, I’m grateful to Miss Ann, for showing me a direction I didn’t want to take."

"I take pleasure in getting African-American students interested in this work, not only in aerospace and mechanical engineering but in any goal that might seem out of reach because they are a minority."

"It’s important to have people that you know are interested in you and your career, a parent, mentor or sponsor. Not all of them, but some of them should look like you. You can’t underestimate that."

"I’m thrilled to be living at a time where multidisciplinary work is rewarded. For instance, grant sponsors now include multiple disciplines and diversity as part of their funding requirements."

"I do believe that I possess the emotional intelligence to lead through those challenges with grace, respect, integrity, and with an inclusive spirit. My leadership will not only be data-driven but also holistically person-centered."

"Accepting the position directing minority engineering programs, I left a regular, tenured job with academic administration Being told I was making a tragic career move solidified my need to support students who looked like me."

"I was told that I would never make full professor because I would not be doing funded research or publishing scholarly papers."

"You are your brother’s keeper. You are responsible. You’re blessed to have what you have, and you’re responsible to take care of others, as God has taken care of you."

"We took care of the land. We captured water in a cistern and used a pump from the well. Nothing was thrown away. You had to use everything because there was little or no money. This meant that we practiced canning, composting, and reusing whatever we could"

"Mom wouldn’t allow pesticides in her garden. Being a Brownie and a Girl Scout, we were taught about preventing forest fires, how to protect the environment, take care of animals, etc."

"Going to college, having a scholarship, never knowing where the money was coming from, but trusting, feeling blessed, and knowing it will come was a blessing. It came from God"

"I had planned to be a pediatrician, then I read Silent Spring and this changed my direction away from medicine and towards chemistry"

"We need a do it yourself approach for sustainable practices. I recall the sanitation strike of 1968 in Memphis, TN. The city came together and demanded change. It is essential to organize and use your community, church, and creative influence to prevail. You have a direct influence on solving our world’s problems."

"My degree put science, engineering, and chemistry all together. This brought me closer to the environment because we have the obligation to take care of mother earth. I have a responsibility to protect her"

"I was first introduced to the idea of questioning the status quo in the education of engineers by Richard Felder in the early 1990s. From then on, I started to realize that we don’t have to teach the way we were taught, just because it’s always been done that way."

"In my opinion, this approach to teaching differently should, in a nutshell, use research to inform practice. We know so much about how to educate students, how students learn, how to best teach, and we are doing a disservice if we are not constantly changing how we teach, how programs are constructed, and how people are trained. We are missing an opportunity if we rely solely on the research without a real, fundamental commitment to the practice."

"I think it’s imperative for engineering educators to not only constantly beat the drum about what happens in the engineering classroom, but to also create experiences to increase literacy among the non-engineers."

"We also have a responsibility to look at alternative ways to assess what students are learning and the impact of our programs. This vision is clear in my mind, and it drives my decision making about running the department and what I think our role can and should be."

"My current projects focused on graduate student and faculty development, belonging, and intersectionality directly align with the Jonsson School’s and UTD’s strategic initiatives. Additionally, I am also applying the insights from this work to our organizational and programmatic changes at UT Dallas."

"Our work most definitely extends beyond the Jonsson School. In 2020, particularly following protests not seen since the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the issues of respect and belonging have become much more prominent in the national conversation. In the fields of engineering, computer science and mathematics, women, Black, Hispanic and Native American people simply are not represented according to their presence in the general population."

"STEM for me was being a doctor. I didn’t even know what an engineer was!"

"As a kid, I wasn’t exposed to the fields of engineering, but I knew I always loved learning and math was always my favorite class. My own research on college degrees when I was a senior in high school led me to find the careers of ‘engineer."

"Tech is in their face, so they don’t have to try hard to know about the industry; it’s right there in the palm of their hands. They see it every day. They use these apps daily,"

"If we want to continue to attract talent to this industry and remain globally competitive, we have to put in the effort to show students our industry and what we do. If not, they will all gladly head to Silicon Valley."

"I didn’t know what engineering was until my senior year in high school,” said Anderson. “I thought an engineer was a train driver, and nobody told me differently."

"It was all about people who like a challenge; people who are lifelong learners,” said Anderson. “And as I kept reading, I kept hearing myself in this description. People had always said, you’re smart, you should be a doctor or a lawyer. But nobody ever said engineer."

"ExxonMobil was challenging, and I absolutely loved it,” said Anderson. “I loved the boots, the hard hats, getting my hands dirty. I was able to go out into the field, see all the equipment. I was in awe. I fell in love with it."

"Self-doubt is real, and sometimes, we can be our own biggest critics,” said Anderson. “We have to understand that we are excellent. We are great. And at the end of the day, for any woman coming to this industry—if you’re even thinking about it—there’s something in you. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it."

"My research involves the understanding and development of functional biomaterials for tissue regeneration. We focus on the development of synthetic and natural biomaterials that can promote the function of stem cells and other cell types for the repair of orthopaedic injuries, specifically bone and cartilage, as well as spinal cord injuries."

"As a professor, I have the pleasure of mentoring students and postdoctoral trainees in this line of research and in their professional development. My laboratory continues to conduct both discovery science and translational research where trainees and professional staff are encouraged to participate in all aspects of the research. The most challenging aspects of this work continues to be obtaining research funding."

"I am both African American and a woman. I always knew that I was one of the few in my field, whether as an undergraduate majoring in mechanical engineering or later in life as faculty. However, I never felt as if I was at a disadvantage. I was fortunate to have and surround myself with supportive colleagues and mentors over the years."

"Women have to continue to pursue leadership roles in their organizations such that opportunities, such as hiring and promotion, and initiatives to engage and support women can be made a priority."

"It’s important to talk to others, both women and men, who are working in the field so they can learn more about the field and jobs/opportunities that may be available depending upon the level of training."

"One female scientist who has inspired me is Shirley Ann Jackson, PhD. She’s currently the President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, USA) and an accomplished theoretical physicist. She has broken many glass ceilings in her career and continues to be a trailblazer for African-American women and women in general."

"I am not here by accident. And I am also not here solely because of my own efforts. I lead because the legacy of Alcorn’s past has enabled me to envision the promise of our future."

"It takes courage to break a ceiling – it also requires a willing community who sees that shattered glass as a new floor and not a mess."

"I fondly remember gracing this beautiful campus as a student years ago and am forever grateful for the solid foundation it has provided me,” she says. “My life experience and career in higher education has provided me with the tools and skills needed to serve and lead this campus successfully."

"But we never stopped moving forward, thanks to the extraordinary efforts and steadfast resilience of our students, faculty and staff, while keeping our community safe."

"It is my responsibility to ensure we are visible in the spaces, places and with people that are decision-makers so that there is an appreciation for not only the historical but the future relevance of Alcorn."

"IT is now a ubiquitous presence in the lives of students, faculty and staff alike. A modern IT infrastructure is critical as it adds significant value to academic programs and efficiencies to administrative processes,” she explains. “The evaluation and transformation of Alcorn State University’s network infrastructure, wi-fi access, telecommunications and classroom-based technologies are critical components for ongoing success."

"You must see every challenge not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to be a beacon of light and hope for others who may not have that same uplifting experience. Simply put: do good and be good"

"I manage the development of new products, a joint effort between the brewing, research and innovation teams. Part of my job is to take concepts and transfer them into a brewing recipe. I also coordinate test brewing in our Research Pilot Brewery."

"During my junior year of college at Purdue, Pete Kraemer, an alum, spoke to my chemical engineering seminar class about Anheuser-Busch and opportunities for engineers. During my senior year, I decided to put in my resume and never looked back."

"Now, I’m always thinking of food and flavors from a brewing perspective, especially when I go out to eat. It really speaks to my scientific interests in chemistry and biology while also involving a lot of creativity."

"People have a perception that brewers are all guys with beards and are surprised when they see me, an African-American female."

"I tell them that I am a brewer, and that the brewing process is really rooted in science. There is so much you can do with a STEM degree."

"So I could be ready for the challenge and step up to the plate or I could shy away from it. I stepped up. The takeaway from that experience for me was that challenges are going to arise whether you are ready for them or not. So, you have to have faith in your abilities. You just might surprise yourself."

"What I realized is that every time I was posting something, I think I had maybe like a thousand followers or maybe 2,000 in 2020, even after seven years on social media, and it just started growing and people loved when I put engineering and robotics quizzes. They’d be like, “I don’t know what any of this is, but put another one.” And I thought it was so crazy."

"I like to call 2020 my Jerry McGuire moment. It’s like the beginning of Jerry McGuire. He talks about, “I want to be a agent but I want to learn to be a sports agent in a new way.”"

"If I really wanna diversify STEM and the thing I really wanted to see when I was an engineering student was Black women professors in engineering, then how can I increase my visibility for other people and not for me?"

"Where more are the streets than social media? So I started on Twitter, and the way I ended up other places beyond Twitter, ’cause Twitter really was my pocket because I didn’t really understand social media. I still don’t understand Instagram. No clue how Instagram works."

"I mean, it’s a total different kind of dynamic. So I can truly say that Twitter and TikTok are really where my pocket is. Everyone else is just kind of there."

"If you build it, they will come. But you have to build it in the right place, right? So I had to go where they are, you know."

"I do do a lot of cross-posting and cross-pollinating just so that I can have maximum impact. But like I said, I’m trying to invest mostly in now Instagram and TikTok because we’re just not sure how much longer Twitter’s gonna be here."

"After high school I attended North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and wanted to be a hardware engineer. My previous exposure to electrical engineering combined with the fact that I was intrigued by circuits and circuit design, helped me to figure out that I wanted to major in Electrical Engineering."

"As an EE major, my first programming classes were Assembly and Fortran. When I graduated, I worked in the private industry as an electrical engineer and began to do more software programming including designing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) designs for circuit board testing and missile and radar systems."

"While trying to figure out what to do next I decided to pursue my interest in gaming and Intelligent Tutoring Systems by enrolling in the Computer Science PhD program at Drexel University."

"My advisors had backgrounds in computer science, gaming, and cognitive psychology. Through coursework and research, I became interested in how the brain processes information. My research focused on behavioral modeling and mobile learning and I focused my dissertation research on creating intelligent tutoring systems for handheld devices, e.g. Palm Pilots, and early handheld devices.While I enjoyed teaching, I also wanted to learn more in the policy arena that could greatly effect the broader community and I decided to apply for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellowship."

"Fortunately, I was selected for the program and took an unpaid leave of absence from Bowie State to do the fellowship at the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC. During the fellowship I worked on a range of projects including broadening participation in computing, computer science education, and the maker movement. I also joined a great team and produced two National Maker Faires that brought together makers from across the country during the National Week of Making."

"I was actively involved internally as a social change agent, as an inclusion and equity change agent."

"I accidentally stumbled into this gap that wasn’t being filled and decided to create an organization to fill it."

"I saw an opportunity to focus all of the knowledge and connections that I’d gained into creating this pipeline of founders, as opposed to just a pipeline of tech talent, and to create a pathway for more economic inclusion by opening up opportunities for founders from marginalized communities."

"It’s crucial to ensure that the multitude of advancements unfolding over the next century that profoundly impact humanity are fueled by a rich diversity of thoughts and ideas. This diversity will be the driving force behind innovations that not only create opportunities but also uplift and support all of humanity."

"Absolutely. I think it appropriately describes how I have approached my work throughout my career to some extent but most certainly reflects my journey this past decade."

"I would say yes—to a degree. I would say unequivocally that out of all those different ­industries—chemical, consumer, manufacturing—the industry that I felt most connected to in my work was the ­pharmaceutical and biotech industry, especially in the years that I worked at Genentech because of the nature of the work that we were doing—and its alignment with my core ­values of utilizing technology and science to do good in the world."

"I think there were three or four finalists, and I came on campus for the on-campus interview — and actually this parking lot right there — we pulled into the space and I was practicing in my mind. To go through a presidential search, it's so intense. And one of my mentors told me, "You should throw your hat in that ring to go for that position as a practice, to do a search." So I was practicing."

"And there's been some challenging times — clearly navigating the university through a pandemic, a global pandemic — a lot of triumphs and many trials. The university is postured in a very good place."

"We are going to launch a capital campaign, and I wanted to give someone the opportunity to get to know the city and to most of all get to know the university so that you can get people to lean into investing in the university's mission."

"I love my students and I love this mission and I love the role that Huston-Tillotson University plays in Austin and in Austin's prosperity and in higher education."

"I did not attend a historically Black college, but I've dedicated the last almost 23 years of my professional career to the mission because there's something that happens to young people on these campuses."

"We've worked really, really hard for us to serve that purpose in Austin. We have all kinds of things happening on our campus that are reflective of that. We are the host site for Earth Day. We've had the Texas Tribune have speakers on campus that are very thought-provoking speakers or topics that are very thought-provoking."

"There were neighborhoods where it was almost exclusively Black, and neighborhoods that were exclusively white"

"there wasn’t really a lot of mixing that happened except perhaps through after-school activities like sports and band."

"We would hang out a little, but then as we got older, that ended. I knew it was because we were a different color. We weren’t really supposed to be friends"

"One of the things I remember from growing up was this pride that older Blacks had and this desire to see young Blacks succeed,” she said. “There was this village that you felt a part of. It was this motivation that helped you to want to succeed"

"I wanted initially to be a math teacher like my dad but one of their teacher friends said, ‘You can become an engineer. Engineers make more money than teachers"

"For my high school graduating class, the white guidance counselor was disturbed to have to select me and another Black student for the top scholarships and awards. We even had separate proms"

"Sometimes my male professors, they were not intentionally trying to hurt me, but some weren’t very encouraging of my decision to pursue a Ph.D. One even said, ‘Well, you might not get a husband if you get that Ph.D"

"But I realized that if you show the students that you care, no matter where they were from, they would appreciate who you are and respect you"

"You know, during the August break, I spent time with firefighters, both in central Oregon and in roundtables and at our National Night Out.And the message was consistent."

"The pulling of resources from wildfire fighting activities was unacceptable. And even firefighters that voted for Trump were very concerned that the the land resources that they had. Weren't weren't there in the numbers that they needed them to be in."

"So our office has been engaged regularly on the front lines in, you know, all of the coordinating meetings and keeping abreast of what's happening, informing the public, telling people where resources can be found."

"But also, I've been talking with insurance companies. I've been talking with my colleagues about what it takes for us to make sure we have the resources that we need."

"So I've been telling the firefighters, tell me exactly what you need. Some have said, oh, I need backhoes. I need hard equipment. They've also told me that we need to make sure that we're doing forest management."

"We lost a lot of that capacity with these cuts. And then they're telling me, you know, we also need to have a conversation about insurance and what it means to protect the homes and protect property with good, like, hardier equipment and plants and removing brush from around people's homes."

"where we can, that we are understanding where we should and should not build, or where we are at risk. I mean, that's that's the biggest thing where we're at risk. And, how how can we mitigate as much risk as possible."

"The human waste management systems,” she says. “Watching them transform materials that would have otherwise been waste into nourishing food for fish was inspiring."

"Finding uses for things that would otherwise wind up as pollution in the environment became personal"

"It will take decades to transition our sources of energy, and some industrial emissions have an inherently high carbon cost that may never go away, such as the manufacturing of steel, glass and cement,” Etosha says. “Carbon transformation closes the loop and helps curb the impact of such emissions."

"What we’re doing is essentially industrial photosynthesis,” Etosha says. “We’re transforming carbon dioxide in a manner analogous to what plants do, and the result is carbon compounds and oxygen."

"This support will help us to build a megawatt-sized building block or module that can process two thousand tons of carbon dioxide a year"

"We’re still in early days,” she says. “But we believe carbon transformation to be a critical part of a comprehensive climate strategy."

"What a lot of airlines and large Fortune 500 companies are realizing is that the aviation sector is very hard to decarbonize,” Cave said at the CES tech trade show in January. Solutions such as battery-powered planes and hydrogen will take years to come to scale"

"I admire the leaders who can rise to the need of the moment. Whether it is empathy when their team needs to be listened to, inspiration that motivates large groups to do great things, or patience when things go awry, great leaders can switch into each mode."

"I kind of saw myself as being a scientist in a lab and developing something new and novel helping deploy it as part of a larger company"

"So that's the beautiful thing about astrobiology. [Proving the existence of life] is like the ultimate episode of CSI. You're putting together the biggest forensic case of your life to prove who the killer is, and you’ve got to be able to go to the jury and prove beyond reasonable doubt that you know who's done it."

"Be true to yourself, don’t compromise yourself, ask a lot of questions... that’s literally our job!."

"Employees are our number one asset, and their concerns are valid, so I'm taking a very strategic approach to address items from the DEOCS survey perspective"

"Our headquarters staff is about 144 strong, but we are affecting a workforce in the field which is over 5,000 strong,"

"Because I was working in program offices, it gave me insight into DCMA and what they do in-plant, so that was very beneficial"

"feel like my past roles allowed me to bring my acquisition and Army-specific background into this position so I can best support those in the field"

"I’m a transformational leader and a servant leader at heart"

"I recognize my customer is the workforce in the field, so I am here to serve them. I must make sure that they receive the proper resources, that they have been adequately trained, and I have to ensure that everything they do positively impacts those around them."

"I want to create positive change for the directorate and have TD be a part of Vision 2026’s success"

"The goal is to develop a wearable medical device capable of measuring a multitude of parameters. Most medical devices in current circulation can only measure one or two."

"Optical signals are absorbed and scattered differently depending on skin pigmentation."

"There has been an opening of doors in terms of helping people to connect and collaborate within their field and across fields."

"We’re dealing with very weak optical signals that have to transverse through tissues with lots of [other] elements that absorb and scatter light,"

"It’s very similar to when you’re riding a car and you go through a tunnel. You lose signal because of the absorption of the materials in the tunnel, such that the signal being transmitted from the cell-phone tower is too weak to be processed by your phone."

"There’s a big challenge ahead to balance the gender numbers in the engineering professions. Research indicates that girls are usually around middle school age when they become turned off to math and science."

"I’m finding the culture here to be very open to collaboration and working across disciplines—there’s a real generosity in sharing information."

"Whenever anything broke in our house, before we threw it out, my dad would say, ‘Let’s take it apart just to look inside.’ Because it was already broken, we could break it even more. That was a lot of fun."

"It is an important time in higher education, and I look forward to joining Chancellor Rogers and the students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners of ECU in further advancing the university’s educational and research strengths along with the commitment to the region, the state, the nation and beyond"

"I learned a long time ago that a university’s people are its most important resource,” she said. “And at ECU, starting with the chancellor, and inclusive even of our incoming new students across every level, we all have an opportunity to apply our diverse talents, our perspectives and our hard work to ensure that tomorrow’s ECU will be even stronger than the ECU of today."

"Our team was focused on tissue and organ function more than we focused on the aesthetics,” she said. “So we weren’t seeking to build an organ that looked just like a liver."

"We were focused on creating innovations to help patients whose livers were failing by providing a bridge solution until a transplant was available."

"When you’re bringing different minds and expertise together to create exciting results, it really is a wonderful place to be,” she said. “The strengths ECU has in health care and health sciences, combined with the excellent academic research that’s going on, I think we’re going to create some wonderful things together as one ECU."

"I am an academic and a professor, an engineering education professor. I’m also a former administrator and I am an entrepreneur who is the CEO and founder of STEMinent, LLC, which offers a variety of offerings that have an umbrella of helping people to emerge whole and bold and strong in the workplace, or whichever environment they so choose. So that’s me in a nutshell."

"I went through hell at work. It was a mess. And there’s a quote in the book where I talk about a blueprint and I wished I had a blueprint before I started this experience. But I always said, sometimes you have to be the blueprint. And as I was learning and documenting what was going on, I would look at tweets and kind of just record the tweets. And I wrote essays based on the things that were resonating with people on social media."

"So that is the heart part of this, where it’s my story where it also is informed from the voices of people who’ve gone through situations very similar to mine. And as you know about social media, there was also the upheaval with Twitter/X. And I thought, if it goes away, what about all of that information, all of those conversations."

"I’m also healing as I share what I’ve talked about. So it’s not easy for me to just be like, let me read this every day now. No, that was my life and I lived it. And it was just a moment. And there’s just an element about that that I wanna put about the book too, where it felt like I was sharing a piece of myself and it’s just that it’s all compact, but that was really my life with the death of, you know"

"I think there’s an opportunity for us to become one of the first R1 research HBCUs in the nation. I’m sure you’ve heard over the years, many institutions describe their research focused on rural America."

"Our research is going to be focused on helping urban America. We’re going to address issues of public health, health disparities, climate, poverty, the wealth gap, housing situations, all of the social determinants of health and wellness. This leads into my third priority, which is strengthen our partnerships with the community."

"We’re going to lead economic and community development. We’re going to look at issues of being in a food desert, issues of having retail, restaurants and other types of housing and other types of services available."

"One of the things I think is very important is to make sure our students have the internship opportunities, the externship opportunities and other experiential learning opportunities."

"We’re also going to work on what I’m calling distinguished professorship interaction opportunities. I had a conversation about having executives in residence, or corporate individuals on our campus interacting with our students, be it in person, which is what we hope."

"The biggest concerns I’ve heard were about students who’ve been adversely affected by the pandemic and who may not financially be able to return to campus. I was told about students who have good grades, but they might not be able to afford coming back to campus."

"If you think about what caused the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to be created, think back to 9/11 and the fact that there was information out there in the community that wasn’t being integrated properly. That was the impetus for the creation."

"So we recognized 20 years since 9/11 back in September. Now we’re talking about 17 years of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in just a few days."

"What’s changed is the amount of integration that we’ve seen, that we’ve been able to continue to push on agencies to work together and really to leverage the – not only the strength of each agency, but also the authorities of each agency, to be able to do more for our customers, to be able to provide that intelligence insight. I’ve seen that grow over the years."

"And I know we’ll talk more about that one going forward, but really coming from a place where the ODNI wasn’t – didn’t exist, to a place now, 17 years in, where our place in the community in terms of being able to help with that integration and help standardize some of the things that are happening with the community, whether on the personnel side"

"We did a couple things. One, we tried to frame what disinformation is, because I think there’s still a lack of awareness of the fact that there’s a lot of information out there that is not true and that is basically also trying to shape the way people think about various things based on what the information is"

"I share this story to emphasize the critical importance for us to be socially conscious and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in our solutions."

"I do not stand here on my own two feet alone. None of us got here by our individual merit alone, whether it be teacher, friends, family, mentors, or role models, we each have one or multiple people to whom we are grateful for making this moment possible."

"A Michigan Engineer is one who does not just provide scientific and technological leadership, but is also one who is intellectually curious, socially conscious, creates collaborative solutions to societal problems, and promotes an inclusive and innovative community of service for the common good."

"We each have a solemn duty to make positive contributions to the world. Well, my reasons for becoming an engineer were initially frivolous, but they eventually moved into something more meaningful. I want to have a positive impact on the world."

"We're going to a place that's super cool and is a juicy, juicy science target"

"It's in a place that is really hard to study because Jupiter, my favorite planet, has a massive radiation field around it. Europa is orbiting inside that radiation field, so there are some pretty significant technical challenges with even conceiving a mission that can study a moon there."

"Like, how you get there, how you deal with the radiation, how you power a spacecraft so far from the Sun. This talk will give people a peek into some of the interesting things that have happened along the way and hopefully plant a little seed of excitement that they can nurture over the next five years to get ready for all the science data that this mission is planning to send back."

"The first time I remember being fascinated by space was when I read about how the solar system formed. The fact that it was formed from a giant cloud of gas and dust spewed out by supernovas and it all came together under gravity and made the Sun and all the planets – I thought it was bananas that scientists could figure all that out based on what they can see today. I remember thinking, “That’s really cool that we can know that about space.”"

"The things I do on a day-to-day basis change over the course of the life cycle of a mission. Early on, you’re involved in the requirements and rules the design has to follow so you can meet your mission goals. So you work with people at all the different levels to develop the requirements and make sure all those rules are written properly. Then systems engineers are involved with verifying those requirements and developing tests and sitting in on the tests."

"We really want to be able to grow our food, feed, fiber and fuel in a way that's sustainable and resilient"

"I'm very excited about that opportunity to really drive the vision for the future . . . on what we should be focused on for three years."

"I am a lifelong learner; one best practice I’ve instituted that works for us is a custom of debriefing and lessons learned."

"At USDA, we are committed to delivering solutions to America’s high- priority agricultural challenges. These challenges include producing enough safe and nutritious food to feed a growing population while being good stewards of our natural resources."

"I am excited about the many recent technological advancements and the availability of breakthrough technologies that support and lead innovation in America’s high-tech food and agricultural economy."

"By helping to protect U.S. agriculture, increase agricultural productivity, and increase resilience of U.S. farms these innovations contribute to farm productivity and profitability and expand the ability for U.S. leadership to address the global challenge to “feed everyone.”"

"The ability of the American farm sector to feed far more people today than 6 decades ago, while using less farmland and fewer workers and reducing the environmental impact of food production, is testimony to the impact of agricultural research and innovation."

"USDA is uniquely positioned to defend agriculture from existing and emerging pests and diseases, another major requirement for food security. USDA science agencies maintain an in-house infrastructure of expertise, facilities, and long-term high-risk research and provide resources for agricultural research outside at the land-grant and other universities as well. A great example of one of those invaluable resources is the germplasm collections at ARS."

"These are the backbone of enhancing productivity, minimizing risks, and combatting emerging threats to production."

"I was introduced to agriculture while pursuing a college degree in pulp and paper science and technology at North Carolina State University. While a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, I had the opportunity to join the U.S. Department of Agriculture in their efforts to advance agriculture through research, education, and extension."

"We’re going to keep innovating and seeing how we can fill a void that’s out there involving speech and sound.” — Carol Espy-Wilson, founder and CTO of OmniSpeech"

"I became interested in noise problems while attending a workshop at NSF. People from various companies discussed issues with deploying speech technology over VOIP and dealing with everyday noise."

"Because of my training at MIT where we focused on understanding what’s unique about speech and understanding how it is produced. I could use my knowledge to deal with removing noise to help improve voice communications."

"Many engineers treat speech like it’s any other signal when it is not. As a professor, I had a couple of Ph.D. students who did dissertations in this area, and I had a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard for a year where I could put all of it together into a solution."

"You know one of the things I can say is that to get a doctorate — I have my doctorate in electrical engineering from MIT– you have to be willing to work hard and also have to be passionate about what you’re doing."

"You have to know it’s your calling because it’s not easy in this area particularly when most of the people around you don’t look like you. You will run into hostility. There will be people who think you should not be there, and I had my share of experiences like that."

"You must have confidence in yourself, and for me my spiritual grounding was very important, knowing that God loves me as much as he loves anybody else and that He’ll fight battles I can’t. I’m not in a room to fight. I just believe in myself, and I believe in Him. Some of the groups I was a part of at MIT never had a woman or an African American before."

"It’s a little bit embarrassing, but real in the sense that there was no deliberate move towards engineering. In fact, growing up in Nigeria, engineering was often a profession reserved for men and women were steered toward careers in healthcare and medicine."

"I was resistant to the notion of mentors for a long time, and part of that was probably me being defensive in the sense that people don’t randomly come up to folks like me and nominate us. For a long time, I didn’t get opportunities to interact with mentors in the way you might traditionally describe, but I did have interesting experiences."

"That singular experience is why you are able to have this conversation with me today. The level of confidence that she had in making that proclamation that I could be an engineer was enough to carry me through. I went from that horribly failed exam to getting an A in the class."

"There’s an interesting journey to my research. The class that I was struggling with at the undergraduate level was fluid flow. That is one of the core courses in chemical engineering, and I remember leaving it going, “God, thank you and good riddance.”"

"That really got me excited about graduate school and I was attracted to the lab of Dan Hammer, who was interested in understanding how white blood cells — especially neutrophils, which take up pathogens — interact during the body’s inflammation response. I spent my graduate school days trying to understand how to create particles, artificial cells, that could mimic this behavior."

"My academic career now combines all this to try and understand the expression patterns of these cell surface receptors in cardiovascular disease."

"I first realized I had an aptitude for Math and Science during my high school years at Marine Park JHS, where I was the only Black student enrolled in the Special Progress program. In my senior year of JHS, I won second place in the Science Fair and scored in the 90s on all my Regents and citywide exams."

"I graduated with high honors and passed the exams for all of New York's Technical High Schools but instead of attending those schools, I moved to Cambridge, Mass., to live with my grandparents and attended high school at the Cambridge School of Weston."

"The first one is a favorite is because when I was young, I got to see man go to the Moon."

"Yes, there weren’t any African American women studying aerospace/mechanical like me. There weren’t any at my university, which was a historically Black college. I could have said that I felt out of sorts but because I played sports most of my life and I played with boys, I didn’t really feel so out of place."

"I was used to kind of being the only girl a lot. I probably did better than most in terms of the cultural shock and not having other women around, but I had to deal with some prejudice as people doubted my capabilities. So, there are always challenges and I don’t think it just being about the color of your skin or your gender."

"People just sometimes see what they want. They put their own filters on and choose to like or dislike you based on whatever they think. What I did was just worked really hard and proved them wrong."

"Usually, anticipation is a slow burn, but when you’re on stage in heels, under the bright lights, smiling nervously ahead waiting for the emcee to say your name, the anticipation burns hot and fast."

"No matter how many times I go through it, I can’t help but feel its intensity which then mellows into ambivalence, leaving me in a stupor of more emotions than I can count."

"Although it was my first time at this pageant, I grew up competing in various pageants in Colorado up until I left for college at 15. I had competed twice in Miss Massachusetts USA with disappointing results."

"I grudgingly accepted my unspoken duty to my mom to do this thing that continues to be a significant part of my life for better or worse. She unpacked and furnished my house while I concentrated on adjusting to working remotely for my job I kept from Boston. I employed what felt like grueling levels of self-discipline to prepare for the pageant. After all, I had moved here to pursue business opportunities in pageantry, and wouldn’t the title of Miss Colorado USA be a great foot in the door?"

"I poured these feelings which have been stewing slowly for years into the regimen of restraint I needed to lose ten pounds in 7 weeks. Even this I feared wouldn’t be enough for me to be a viable competitor, but it was all I could reasonably do."

"The discipline naturally spilled over into my work and I had a productive start to my entirely separate and equally significant remote work journey. My boyfriend was with me for it all and offered his observations and insights about all the newness in our lives."

"I share my story because it’s important that you understand me and the value I place on learning and formal education"

"Earning a PhD from Northwestern was an important milestone in my life. I once stood where you now stand. I know how hard you have worked to get where you are today, and I am impressed by your accomplishments."

"I once stood where you now stand. I know how hard you have worked to get where you are today, and I am impressed by your accomplishments."

"For my science project, I studied how quickly different foods would mold when placed in various locations. At one point, we had stinky, moldy food all over the house. That’s love"

"My mother encouraged me every step of the way and she always believed in me. Her confidence fortified me for decades."

"Whatever your future holds, I hope you will serve humanity and positively impact the way we live."

"Each of you has your own crew of supporters. You can name those friends and family members right now. Those who believe in you and regularly invest in your well-being. Those who surround you with love and encouragement, giving the best of themselves so that you can be your personal best,"

"Perhaps they are among the names listed on your acknowledgements page. Perhaps they are sitting across the auditorium now with huge smiles on their faces. Perhaps they will be hooding you today. You know who they are."

"I figured my clientele might be older and not want to be rotating or stand still for too long"

"That’s why I chose the scanner and it’s been pretty useful."

"You can pay crappy money for crappy clothes and throw them away to buy more crappy clothes"

"Or you can pay good money for really good clothes and keep them for years."

"That wasn’t my best engineering moment"

"So after my parents went to bed, I'd go grab the phone and I'd wire it up and I’d call my boyfriend. Then I’d unhook it and take it back downstairs,"

"And my parents, for the life of them, could not figure out why the phone bill was so high. I finally told my mother, like five years ago, that it was me who did that."

"You are competing with some wicked smart people from all over the world, literally all over the world. So that is like… the floor as you're going in. Just be very, very mindful of your education."

"That's because you have seven million pounds of thrust that is lifting you off the launch pad"

"It feels like there's an elephant sitting on your chest,” she said. “So breathing out is very labored. You have to be very deliberate about exhaling and that lasts for about 45 seconds to a minute. And then after that, you have left earth's atmosphere and you're in space"

"You eat just about any type of food that you want,” Higginbotham said. “So my commander, who was a big shrimp guy, had shrimp cocktail at every single meal — breakfast, lunch and dinner."

"And what that means is that we go around the world one time every 90 minutes. And in that 90 minutes, we get to see one sunrise, about 45 minutes and then a sunset. So if you were just to plaster yourself at the window for a full day, you would see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. Pretty cool"

"I became particularly fascinated with the TV show – The Bionic Woman. Watching the show, which correlated with my love for science fiction, helped me to figure out what I wanted to do– I wanted to make an impact on the world and the rest of my life has been about figuring out what that means. Of course, that naturally leads to developing new innovations to make things that matter to people."

"Having diverse perspectives is an important aspect to developing innovative solutions to hard problems. Some of it is because, when you have a group of individuals with different experiences that collaboratively contribute to developing a solution, it gets everyone else in the room to think differently and ask different questions. Studies have shown, time and time again, that when you combine different perspectives from a diverse group of people, the result is having better innovations."

"We are getting closer. In addition to Figure’s advances, Amazon is testing Agility Robotics’ Digit, a two-legged robot, in its U.S. warehouses and Elon Musk’s Tesla is developing a humanoid robot called Optimis. That said, I think we are still a little ways from the tipping point since we don’t yet have a low-cost platform at scale."

"I think we are about a year to three years away from that. When we get there, these robots will begin to displace the factory floor’s lower skill manual jobs, but it will not yet replace the knowledge worker, at least not immediately."

"Robots will take away jobs but, on the more positive side, it will also lead to the creation of new jobs. We are not yet at the stage where robotic systems are fully intelligent. They can navigate in different factory environments, but they aren’t able to think adaptively in dynamic situations. Humans will therefore be needed as their work partners."

"I’ve always liked math."

"We have to do something like this to get them interested in science. Sometimes they are not aware of the number of black scientists, and don't even know of the career opportunities until it is too late."

"I am a Christian with room to spare and feel that we all need to do our part in times of trouble, we are a reasonable drive from many of the affected areas. I have already reached out to friends of mine in the Raleigh-Durham area. I also have lots of friends in this area who would be willing to help."

"Know what you were born to do. Know your purpose. Know your destiny..."

"A focus on less complexity will drive the cost down for generative AI and make it more available for a broader global audience"

"At this time, most of my technology work involves consulting with others at a very high level. For example, the specifics of issues associated with cybersecurity, blockchain technology, and a little bit of AI."

"My background is in computer hardware. But over the years, I have transitioned from hardware design to software design. But someone who's an expert in both or understands both is a more valued person. I keep my tentacles, if you will, in both hardware and software."

"At the time, the only type of engineer I was aware of was one who drove a train. I was not interested in learning how to drive a train, but very much interested in getting away from home for the summer so that I did not have to wash dishes."

"One could argue whether or not it's a breakthrough, but DeepSeek has really rattled the gen AI environment."

"There's always been a parallel between more complex versus how we make things simple but still get the job done. I remember decades ago, from a computer architecture or design perspective, there was a focus on less complex instructions. This is called "reduce instruction set.""

"I think in the long run, this focus on less complexity will drive the cost down for generative AI and make it more available for a broader global audience because at this time, it takes a significant amount of money to build a really large gen AI project."

"I think it's important to get started as soon as you can. In one sense, I decided I wanted to get a doctorate when I was 5 years old, but I didn't know that I wanted to be a professor until many years later."

"When most people think of a professor they think "teacher," and that is true. However, my work entails the two other "pillars of professorship"--research and service. On any given day, my research involves everything from grant writing, to presenting experimental results at conferences, to guiding students through their own masters and PhD programs."

"I tell my students to hone their communication skills, both oral and written. It's no secret that we engineers and scientists are often guilty of being poor communicators, but being able to communicate, especially to the general public, is essential. I love that show "Big Bang Theory," but we're not all that bad! The other thing needed is imagination. You must be willing to step into the unknown because in STEM you won't be hired to solve problems for which the answers are already known."

"Once my mom told a shop owner I was going to college next year. He laughed and asked if I wanted an "Mrs. degree". Even as a teenager, I was ticked off! There are people who can't fathom women in STEM—especially women of color. Oftentimes as the only African-American and/or female in situations, I STILL run into those subtle doubts or even insults at times. However, I've found that a tough skin, a determined mind, and a prayerful heart can take you through any challenge and to any goal."

"Read, read, read, and learn, learn, learn."

"My greatest challenge is climbing the ladder of success, and pulling others behind me," she said. "If you see a turtle sitting on top of a fence post, you know he had help getting there"

"This downward spiral is especially severe for girls of color, girls with disabilities, girls living in poverty and girls who are learning English as a new language, The United States cannot afford to lose more than half of its talent and the fresh perspective that women and minorities can bring to these critical fields. We must work together across the boundaries of skin color and gender."

"Communication is paramount to your success, You need to articulate how your great idea is impactful, whether to your community, society or economy. Having strong technical skills is critical, but you must also be able to work with others and communicate effectively to bring those ideas to life."

"It just looks otherworldly to me … like, what you would see if you were on the moon."

"I figured that I’d become a great scientist and then maybe, maybe, maybe in the future I’ll be able to apply, if I establish myself well enough"

"Even just the weight of your head and trying to hold it up and some of the muscle pains that you'll have because you haven't held your head up in what eight months almost for us"

"It was amazing beautiful seeing the earth from that vantage point," Epps said. "But for me, one of the big things is that now I want to see trees, I want to see people, I want to touch things and experience things here on Earth more than I did before. And it's just made me appreciate things I think just a little bit more and the simple things, not the big things but the simple things in life that make me happy."

"I think they need to pursue their dreams," Epps said. "You may not make it to space, but will you make it way further than if you had never pursued that dream."

"I’m still in awe of seeing the Earth from the vantage point we had from the Dragon vehicle as we were approaching the International Space Station, You can see it in pictures, you can even dream about those pictures, but there’s just something that happens when you see it with your own eyes."

"That's right. That's right. They were scientists involved in public health. And for that reason, I always was encouraged to explore science, math, as well as all of the broader fields of social and physical sciences."

"Yes, I was academically inclined. I was the good student. I raised my hand a lot. I got good grades, and I tended to be very much engaged with my teachers. I tended to know my teachers very well."

"Well, in those days there were no CCD cameras, so it was a regular camera like yours and then attached was a digitizer, which provided you digital images, and then you worked offline on these digital images. And the challenge there was that first of all the memory in computers were very small. We worked on small images, so the resolution was not very good, worked on 64 by 64 pixels or at best 128 by 128 pixels, so the resolution was rough, and in texture you really need a higher resolution in order to capture the local properties, so that was a challenge. Technology just wasn’t there. Everything had to be made in the lab. We had to build digitizers and deal with swapping the memory to disk all the time, because the memory was typically 64K or so or even – then later on I worked on PDP-11, which had a 32K memory, the cache, so it was very different time, and therefore the approaches you took were quite different than today people use millions of pictures and do statistical analysis, very different."

"Well, no. There are many other changes. I mean, of course the speed and the memory size of the computer is phenomenally different, I mean, but the parallel isn’t that the distributed computing is also tremendously big difference and the display systems. At that time we used – when I worked at Stanford we didn’t have even a raster display. It was all just vector displays that displayed only the contours. At the end of my stay at Stanford we got the first raster display, which allowed you to display all the pixels, but in the beginning it was all just displaying contours."

"Well, that’s a different story. When I moved to Penn there was nothing, and so I had to build everything from scratch. My first master student, Adam Snyder, was an electrical engineer, and he and I built the digitizer, because we had to buy these analog cameras – camera, one camera – and then build a digitizer. And then I got some NSF initial grants that allowed me to buy a raster display so that we can visualize. The department had PDP-11, so I was working on that computer, and, as I said, it had just a very small memory, and so we were swapping things back and forth. I started to work on – I basically wanted to continue my Ph.D. work, and one of the first things that I started to look at was texture gradient and how can you interpret the three-dimensional information from the two-dimensional projection of the texture gradient. So that was the first Ph.D. with Larry Lieberman, right, was my first Ph.D. student, who then went to IBM research and worked on – had a group in robotics, because I was always interested in the three-dimensional interpretation of the visual information from the very beginning, and I always was interested in vision for, not just vision per se but what is vision for. I thought that it was a good way of testing your algorithms, if you can find the interpretation where you are or can you grasp things or move around? I mean, the robotics gives you a very good testing of your sensory processing, so that’s what I focused on. And then I think it was maybe ’73 or ’74 a man by name Britton Chance, who just passed away yesterday, 97 years old, who was a very prominent biophysicist, he invited me to look at some of these X-ray images from rat brains, because they were really interested in automating the image processing of these medical images. So he brought me into this group, and I found it very interesting, and so that started my career in medical image processing. I worked with him or for him for about six months, but then he was a very strong personality and my joke was you worked for him or you didn’t, and so I quit because I didn’t want to work for him. But then I continued with other people in the medical school at Penn on medical image processing, and I did some nice work there."

"Well, the first robotics system was when I got money to purchase a PUMA robot, which was one of the first robots available for academic labs. And around ’76, ’77, I started to connect the manipulation with the camera work, and grasping was one of the – and of course in those days they had only two-finger grasping, so I initiated with the Penn mechanical-engineering department to design a three-fingered robot, and so we were very much ahead of time in this regard. Around that time I also connected with a French laboratory in Toulouse, which had a rubber sensitive pressure sensor, and as part of the collaboration they made me what we called a “French finger,” which had sensors, so we were able to do this kind of a tactile connection. And so one of my first Ph.D. students – well, he wasn’t my first, but I don’t know, third or so. I think it was third or fourth. Peter Allen, who’s a professor now in Columbia University, he did the first work of this interaction of tactile and visual information, and so that was that."

"With the three-fingered hand? This was – well, I forget the name of the professor in the mechanical-engineering department. He passed away too. I kind of outlive all of my collaborators, but I think the student who designed it was Abramson, if I remember, three-fingered hand with a palm, and then we put some tactile pressure sensors on that, so that allow us to find where you are connecting. And actually, Ken Goldberg, who is here a professor, did his master degree with me on using these tactile sensors for recognition purposes. So, I also during that time connected with psychologists, who were prominent in this tactile perception. One of them was Susan Letterman, who is an outstanding professor-scientist in tactile perception at Queens University in Canada. And then she connected me with another professor, Roberta Klatzky, who is a professor at CMU in the psychology department, and we had a very fruitful collaboration. I learned quite a bit from these two people on how people perceive that – for example, people have certain procedures, motoric procedures when they want to find out how hard something is or what is the surface texture, and so there are these modules that people – procedures that people use for exploring. They called it “exploratory procedures.”"

"Nature is medicine for the soul, Miss Rolston"

"Mentally tease apart the threads that keep you connected to your mother. See that those threads, those feelings, that you experience with her are what find the two of you -- but they do not have to weave the tapestry of your entire life."

"Anything she says will be ok with him -- this she feels instinctively. She looks up and meets his eyes: eagle against the sky, his eyes boring into her. He leans over and kisses her, first lightly, then his arms circles her waist and his hand grasps a shoulder blade, pulling her up and closer. Inside her a diamond, the glittering spot where her feelings have solidified into the hardest substance on earth, catches fire and melts"

"The mother needs mothering too"

"For instance, if AI cannot be conscious, then if you substituted a microchip for the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness, you would end your life as a conscious being"

"And if an AI is a conscious being, forcing it to serve us would be akin to slavery"

"If superintelligent machines are not conscious, either because it’s impossible or because they aren’t designed to be, we could be in trouble."

"For if we are not careful, we may experience one or more perverse realizations of AI technology—situations in which AI fails to make life easier but instead leads to our own suffering or demise, or to the exploitation of other conscious beings"

"In the long term, the tables may turn on humans, and the problem may not be what we could do to harm AIs, but what AI might do to harm us."

"Kurzweil and other transhumanists contend that we are fast approaching a “technological singularity,” a point at which AI far surpasses human intelligence and is capable of solving problems we weren’t able to solve before, with unpredictable consequences for civilization and human nature."

"According to a recent survey, for instance, the most-cited AI researchers expect AI to “carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human” within a 50 percent probability by 2050, and within a 90 percent probability by 2070.”"

"The development of AI is driven by market forces and the defense industry—billions of dollars are now pouring into constructing smart household assistants, robot supersoldiers, and supercomputers that mimic the workings of the human brain."

"If having access to instruments impacts other students as it did me, kids would have more opportunities to engage with a broader group of people and to gain greater understanding of the world."

"Reach out to teachers and school counselors who can connect you to science and engineering camps."

"I spent my formative years on the Choctaw Indian reservation in Philadelphia, Mississpi, and in Missoula, Montana, where I loved playing outdoors, watching farm animals, and observing everything around me. I believe living in these settings motivated me to explore and respect nature."