IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2020 - 2

Letter From the Editor

Time for
Rock Stars

This time last year, the world as we
know it began to undergo an unwelcome and profound change. For many
of us, our lives and the goals we aspired
to reach for our career and education
journeys were dealt a huge blow. The
COVID-19 pandemic has required us to
revisit our priorities and think beyond
convention. We must now quickly and
decisively pivot our attitudes and behaviors whether we want to or not. One
bright spot arising from the pandemic
is that now, it is universally agreed that
the most important priorities are our
health, safety, and working together for
everyone to survive this pandemic.
Although many individuals' response
to dealing with the pandemic was to
"just wait until everything returned to
normal," IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) members around the world
jumped into immediate action. They are
helping others develop online/remote
access solutions to ensure that quality education continues while being
mindful that the most vulnerable populations should not be forgotten. Members around the world worked through
the IEEE Special Interest Group on
Humanitarian Technologies COVID-19
response initiative, using their talents
to develop low-cost sanitizing devices
and other contactless technologies. This

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2020.3020447
Date of current version: 4 November 2020

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

entering into fields that traditionally
included very few women. Orianthi is
now recognized as one of the greatest
female guitarists in the world. Famous
artists have been honored and fortunate
enough to have her join them on stage,
including the late, great Michael Jackson. We thank Orianthi for sharing her
story with us and wish her much success
on her newest album.
We are proud of our own WIE rock
stars and hope that you enjoy their stoalso included novel ways of reaching
ries. Anu Gokhale has been a long-time
communities throughout the world to
mentor, educator, and innovator. She
communicate safe social distancing
takes on challenging and often
and cleansing practices that are
controversial topics that span
respectful of cultures while
both technology, such as
ensuring the availability of
cybersecurity, and diverlocal resources.
sity and inclusion areas,
In this issue of IEEE
including implicit bias.
Women in Engineering
Caroline Mahoney uses
Magazine, we celebrate
cognitive psychology to
rock stars who are taking
understand and optimize
the helm to forge new pathcog nit ive per for m a nce
ways for careers and educaKaren Panetta
for individuals and teams
tion. These individuals are
in stressful high-risk, high-stakes envitackling the most controversial and
ronments. During this period of social
challenging social and technology issues
unrest and worrisome economic times,
while speaking through their actions.
Mahoney's work will inevitably help us
We need more rock stars to step forward
rethink how we train and educate people
and lead us through the pandemic and
to work with teams and diverse individuals.
beyond. We cannot wait for someone else
Jacquelyn Adams is another rock
to solve the global challenges we face
star who understands that communitoday. We cannot just use words and
cating technology to broader audiences
promises of support. We need everyone
and lifelong learning is instrumental for
to speak through action. No one wins
making healthy and engaging work culan IEEE Medal or IEEE Technical Field
tures and environments. Melanie Ooi's
Award for promises. Rather, they are
inspirational story of overcoming the
recognized for accomplishing challengcultural bias of women in engineering
ing and daunting tasks that others may
to her controversial research in canhave insisted were impossible to solve.
nabis makes her a rock star role model
In the spirit of rock stars, IEEE
for all of us. Our WIE rock star of diverWomen in Engineering Magazine
sity and inclusion, Susanne Tedrick,
interviews musician Orianthi. Her
has taken the lead to champion women
career path as a lead guitarist in the
of color in technology and help others
music industry has paralleled many of
understand what diversity and inclusion
the shared experiences that women in
really are and how to deliver on them.
engineering have encountered, namely,

DECEMBER 2020

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2020

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