IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008 - 8

A Sex Symbol and Inventor
Director Amy Redford, daughter of
Sundance founder Robert Redford and the
only woman on the panel, highlighted yet
another commonality between the sciences and film arts-the predominately
male face of both. Amy is directing a feature film project about the
actress Hedy Lamar.
Lamar was a 1940s
Hollywood sex symbol known for playing beauties and
seductresses, including most famously
Delilah in Cecil B.
Hedy Lamar
de Mille's Samson
is the focus of an
upcoming film
and Delilah.
directed by
What is little
Amy Redford.
PHOTO COURTESY OF
known
is that
GETTY IMAGES
Lamar was also a
pioneering inventor who had a bevy of
patents when she died, among them an
early form of spread spectrum that
became the basis for wireless communications technology. She and her partner
on the patent, the composer George
Antheil (see the article "The Ballet
Mécanique and Its Computer-Aided Heritage" in this issue), called their technology "frequency hopping" and donated it to
the U.S. government for the World War II
war effort. Their patent remained classified until 1985, so little was known about
her involvement. The Sloan Foundation
supported the Lamar script with a grant
to the screenwriter and also staged readings by well-known actresses. The Foundation and Weber have continued to
mentor the project toward production
and recently brought it to the attention of
Amy Redford, who, Weber notes, is one of
a small group of women filmmakers.

Mad Scientist/Evil Genius
In 2006, women reportedly comprised
only 15% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the 250
top-grossing domestic films. This cumulative figure is only slightly better than
the approximately 11% reported for
women engineers in the professional
workplace. Weber regards his task of
changing the media stereotype of those in

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

the sciences to involve changing its "mad
scientist/evil genius" representation as
well as broadening its male-only image.
The Sloan Foundation's "Public
Understanding of Science and Technology" program was conceived and started
by Doron Weber ten years ago to support
development of science-themed scripts
by Sundance and other festivals and
organizations. A feature screenplay about
DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin is in
development as a result of Sloan's collaboration with Tribeca Film Festival. In
addition, women have written a number
of the Sloan-supported screenplays. The
Foundation also promotes books, radio,
television, theater, and new media with a
science underpinning.
Director Alex Rivera described invention as the substance of life. As a filmmaker who is part of the underrepresented
15%, I much appreciate the efforts of
Sloan, Weber, and Sundance to broaden
participation in the substance of life.
-Karen Johnson produces
documentary and fiction films
through her company Goodmovies
Entertainment, Inc.

Fostering
Engineering Careers
Persian Gulf region
investing in women

Zayed University creates a friendly environment for women engineering students at the B.S., M.S., and-soon-the
Ph.D. levels.
The United Arab Emirates is investing
heavily in educating women, on the
graduate and undergraduate levels, in
the computing and telecommunication
fields. (See the article "Eye on Dubai: An
Engineering Oasis" in this issue.) Young
women in the United Arab Emirates are
eagerly taking advantage of this opportunity to learn new ideas in such subjects
as networking, network security, and
information security as well as software
and database development.
Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.,
is spearheading this movement by

SUMMER 2008

offering studies in the difficult fields of
algorithms, mathematics, and encryption in a friendly, caring environment
that focuses on the individual. This is
in sharp contrast to the highly competitive and aggressive atmosphere in
large technical education institutions,
where women often feel lost in deadline-oriented programming projects
paper submissions. Increasing the
number of women in computing, mathematics, science, and engineering in
academia and commercial enterprises is
Zayed's goal.
Much of the lack of women worldwide
in information technology and engineering can be attributed to a lack of confidence that has built up over the brief
history of computer-related fields such as
bioinformatics, artificial intelligence,
human computer interaction, networking, and telecommunications. Zayed University is working successfully to correct
that situation.

Making Women's
Achievements Known
Part of the problem is that technical discoveries by women are usually not well
known to the public and are little publicized in the media and textbooks. What if
there were an international conference on
computer science named after "Amazing
Grace" Hopper, or one on mathematics or
programming named for Ada Byron
Lovelace, or one on nanotechnology
named for Christine Peterson? That would
go a long way toward making young
women mindful of the achievements of
these illustrious women and aware of their
own potential for achievement.
Then there is the problem of keeping
women in technological fields, not only in
academic institutions but also in industry
and business. Once educated, women
engineers and scientists need a vibrant
and working infrastructure of support.
Toward that end, Zayed University is
working to establish local chapters in the
U.A.E./Persian Gulf region of the Association for Computer Machinery Committee
on Women in Computing (ACM-W) and
the Computing Research Association
Committee on Women in Computing
Research (CRA-W).

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008