IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2020 - 34

WIE From Around the World

Believe You Can
and You Will

I was bothered by this stigma that
girls cannot do well in engineering, and
I yearned to break the norm by stepping
into the engineering field. In my country, we do not have enough resources for
higher education or investigating more
topics to gather knowledge. One has to
go abroad to pursue higher education to
Don't be afraid to challenge societal and cultural norms
learn, explore, and contribute to engineering fields. It was always my dream
to learn more and establish new or novel
ideas for the betterment of society and
its people.
My vision brought me to the United
ware cybersecurity. Apart from this, I
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in the
States to pursue an advanced
am also working on some colDepartment of Electrical and Comlaborative projects focused
puter Engineering at Florida Internaeducation. My driving force
is to prove that women can
on metal-ceramic-based
tional University (FIU) at the INSYST
also contribute signifinanocomposites for solar
Integrated Nanosystems Research
cantly to the engineering
energy-harvesting purposLab. I have earned my bachelor's and
field if they receive the
es and a biosensing project
master's of science degrees from the
proper support. To do so, I
for cancer detection using
Department of Applied Physics, Elechad to challenge the estaba DNA aptamer.
tronics, and Communication Engilished
norms of my society
neering at the University of Dhaka,
Naznin Akter
and my culture to be where I
Bangladesh. While at FIU, I earned my
Breaking the Mold
am today. My family members' immense
M.S. degree in the Department of ElecIn developing countries like Banglasupport of my dream has helped me
trical and Computer Engineering.
desh, access to an educational instituMy research is mainly focused on
tion is beyond most people's reach, and
investigating and exploring novel matescientific education is a lofty dream,
rials such as graphene, which is used to
especially for girls and women. Our
design a high-responsivity, low-noise,
society has a common belief that girls'
tunable, compact-size, faster response
brains are not made for the engineering
time, room-temperature operation, and
research field; they are only capable of
lower-cost terahertz detector. Moreover,
being a doctor while boys are selected
the same devices are expected to serve
for engineering fields. So, when a girl
as terahertz emitters when plasma-wave
is born, society or the parents have
instabilities are excited under the right
already decided her fate.
biasing conditions, and they are likely to
But what if a particular girl doesn't
have higher emission power.
want to be a doctor? What if she wants
I am currently working on terahertz
to search the multiverse of science and
integrated circuit (IC) image processaspires to be a physicist or a scientist?
ing using convolution neural networkThen it becomes more challenging due
based deep learning to identify faulty
to a scarcity of resources, infrastructure,
ICs among pure ICs. The latter is cruand opportunities. It is difficult for young
cial for future applications in hardresearchers, especially girls and women,
to continue research without cooperation
and support from employers, coworkers,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2020.3020452
Akter at the 2019 IEEE Photonics
and even family members.
Conference.
Date of current version: 4 November 2020

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

DECEMBER 2020

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2020