IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022 - 34

this endeavor-not only in the quality
of the ideas but in the inspiration and
motivation to contribute to improving
the quality of life for women around
the world-it
is no wonder this is
planned as an ongoing initiative. Congratulations
to all involved with the
25th Anniversary Celebration competition
and good luck to the next round
of participants!
-Leslie Zucker
WIE Celebrates
the Extraordinary Men
Supporting those who
support others
a
As the well-known saying goes, " Behind
every great man is a great woman. " But
the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE)
25th Anniversary Celebration Committee
thought why not the other
way around?
Anikó Costa and Carolina Oliveira,
committee leaders for the Extraordinary
Man initiative, hypothesized that there
were many men who deserved acknowledgment
for the support they have
provided to women who pursue
careers in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) fields. Cinzia Da
Vià, chair of the 25th anniversary
celebrations, shares
that " though we are celebrating
women for the 25th anniversary
celebrations and concentrating
on what has been achieved in the past 25
years, while I was writing the introduction
that you find on the website, it was
clear that we should be celebrating men
who have been instrumental in helping
women, too. "
The result was eight men, nominated
by women, who are champions for recognizing
talent and understanding the
difficulties women face in the academic
or work environments. It is the commitDigital
Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2022.3203134
Date of current version: 7 November 2022
tee's hope that celebrating these men
will inspire others to join women in fulfilling
their potential.
" Our idea is to say that in a world
where women are still not seen as equals,
as they should be, we can find men who
really support women, " says Oliveira, a
Ph.D. student at the NOVA School of Science
and Technology in Lisbon, Spain, in
the field of computational and perceptual
systems who was vice-chair of the IEEE
WIE Affinity Group Portugal Section at
that time. Working with Costa, an assistant
professor in the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering (ECE)
at NOVA who is also a longtime IEEE
Member and a past chair of WIE Portugal,
Oliveira, Da Vià, and the committee recognized
the following men to be designated
as " Extraordinary " for their fundamental
role in supporting women in their career.
Meet them in alphabetical order here.
John Baillieul
Arlington, Massachusetts, USA
John Baillieul is a professor of engineering
at Boston University who joined
IEEE in 1983 when he was appointed
associate editor of IEEE Transactions
on Automatic Control and is now a
Life Fellow of IEEE.
" Early in my career, I
came to a stark realization
that considerable
conscious effort would
be needed to make the
IEEE as inclusive and
diverse as it clearly wants
John Baillieul
to be today, " says Baillieul,
noting that the same was
true for his university. In one instance,
he recalls that, as technical note editor
of IEEE Transactions on Automatic
Control, he attended an IEEE Panel of
Editors meeting and dinner in New York.
" Being in my early 40s at the time, I
felt a little out of place among the other
editors, who were mostly 20 or 30 years
older. Beyond the age differences, however,
I found the dinner conversation discomfiting
as the older editor colleagues
(all males) turned to discussing the various
reasons that women were less able
to do engineering work. As someone
34
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2022
Stamatis Dragoumanos
Kirkizates, Arta, Greece
Spoken like a true programmer,
Stamatis
Dragoumanos says,
" Stereotyping is
an operation of the
human mind which
is established to process
information more
quickly. But destroying
stereotypes is liberating! "
He goes on to say that " as a father
of an 11-year-old girl, as an educator,
as a mentor, as an engineer, and as a
who had come of age during the protests
of the Vietnam War and the U.S. Civil
Rights Movement, I was appalled. "
Three years later, he became editor-in-chief,
and is pleased the journal
began to see success over time in
recruiting an editorial board that was
more diverse in terms of both gender
and geography. " An important dynamic
in our professional Society becoming
more inclusive was recruiting people
who would be active role models, " says
Baillieul. " There were a number of such
people early on, but one who stands out
is Bozenna Pasik-Duncan who I had met
in Poland. Bozenna was and is a highenergy
woman who had moved to the
University of Kansas, and she took it as
a challenge to increase the numbers of
professionally engaged women. Eventually,
she formalized her efforts by creating
an organization called Women in
Control. " Baillieul supported her efforts
by attending many of the lunch meetings
that Pasik-Duncan arranged at
major Society conferences each year.
Humbly, Baillieul says, " I don't know
that my enthusiasm for increasing
diversity ever rose to the level of being
extraordinary, but in the 1980s and
1990s it was perhaps unusual. Nowadays,
I would say it is quite ordinary, and
male colleagues my age and younger are
fully on board. There is still work to be
done because the numbers of women
in engineering are proportionately less
than in the general population. I am
optimistic about the future, however. "
Stamatis
Dragoumanos
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022

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