IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2021 - 6

Women to Watch
Lifting Humanity
From Serious Problems
Scaglione continually adapts and explores new research areas
i
If it seems like Dr. Anna Scaglione has
jumped on many different topics in her
research, that was by design. " I appreciate
people who have the patience to
drill down and remain in one area for
their scholarly career, but I've moved
my research interests and work areas
quite a bit to develop new expertise, hoping
to bring a fresh point of view, " she
says. " There may not seem to be a clear
logic, but there's a method to the madness. "
She has also been on an interesting
career journey in academia, having been
a faculty member at four different institutions
before landing at Cornell Tech this
past fall as a professor of electrical and
computer engineering.
Scaglione's research is at the intersection
of signal processing, network
science, and energy systems. The group
she directs, the Signal Information Networks
and Energy (SINE) lab, is divided
into two parts: " my students call themselves
the low-voltage and high-voltage
sides, " she laughs. The low-voltage work
encompasses signal processing and data
science, communications, and complex
network modeling. High-voltage refers
to sustainable physical infrastructures,
particularly energy-delivery systems.
Scaglione shares one problem the
team is evaluating-the incoming " elephant
in the room " as she says-is how
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2021.3109316
Date of current version: 3 November 2021
we are going to be able to handle millions
of control points to support lower
emissions and integrate more
renewable power. Another
great challenge the two
parts of her group seamlessly
connect to tackle
is addressing physical infrastructure
cybersecurity
threats and the confidentiality
of data.
To secure the grid, Scaglione relies
and draw but didn't think that was a
good idea either. I liked science but
was extremely squeamish, so biology
or medicine were not good professions.
I wanted something that was creative
and was intrigued by computers and
the advances in communications, so I
thought of engineering. I know a lot of
people think engineering is not creative,
but it was clear to me that it had to be. "
Scaglione received bachelor's, master's,
and doctoral degrees in electrical
engineering with a focus on signal
processing from the Università
degli Studi di Roma " La Sapienza. "
In between each
degree, she considered job
offers in Italy but felt there
was more creative work to
be done in academia, jokDr.
Anna Scaglione
on her knowledge in electric and, more
recently, gas grid systems as well as
expertise in machine-to-machine communications
and data science. Although
encryption and password protection are
the first lines of defense, Scaglione's
work goes beyond that to research how
to detect security events and mitigate
them. " It is a fascinating combination of
algorithms and applications, not broadly
understood because people focus on the
network side and not the physical infrastructure, "
she describes. " But the need
is growing because we're already faced
with problems and more will come if we
don't do something soon. "
An Unexpected Path
This may not have been the destination
Scaglione predicted, but her journey
makes sense. When deciding what to
study, she recalls, " I wasn't interested
in law, I wasn't interested in liberal
arts, though I loved history. I sketch
6
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2021
ing " I was trying to escape
the jobs I'd worked so hard to
qualify for. " Although it was not exactly a
call to teaching at first that caused her to
pursue a Ph.D. degree, she saw the research
work available by going that route
was ultimately what she wanted to do.
She next moved to the United
States, taking an offer of a postdoctoral
researcher at the University of Mi nnesota,
Twin Cities in 1999 with someone
she had collaborated with as a Ph.D.
student. During the year in Minnesota,
she applied to a number of academic jobs
back in Italy, but fortuitously, nothing
worked out there. The wireless industry
was booming at the time, but " many
dot-coms crashed two years later, so it
was good I didn't get a job at the time
and get derailed in my scholarly pursuits, "
she recalls.
Scaglione later applied to and ended
up receiving multiple offers from universities
in the United States, opting to
join the University of New Mexico as an
assistant professor for one year before
moving to the same position at Cornell
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2021

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