IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2018 - 30

It's all hands on deck as Huy works on his award-winning prosthetic robot arm.

"I had some friends older than me
who are good in technology," Huy
recalls. "When I had problems working,
they helped me solve the problems. My
teacher also gave me ideas and advice,
which helped a lot in the project."
He entered the school's technology
contest for students and won a trip to
a science fair in his province, where he
won first place. Huy brought the project
to the national science fair in Vietnam
and also won first place in the robotic
and intelligent-machine category. The
government selected him to participate
in the International Science Fair in Los
Angeles in 2017, and he eventually won
the IEEE award.

What's Ahead
Huy plans on going to FPT University
in Vietnam and is working to improve
his English as well as learning another
foreign language. He is interested in
computer science and robotics, and he
likes three-dimensional (3-D) programming and design. He's enjoying programming his robot and using a 3-D
printer to make models and coming up
with a skin for the robot.
He plans on majoring in information technology so he can continue to

IEEE women in engineering magazine

develop his passion for programming
and computer science. "Someday I want
to be a robotics engineer and make more
things to help people," he says. "I have
a robot nurse project in mind and will
make one when I am better in programming and technology."
-Debbie Sniderman

Hot Turkey
Sarma is influencing the next
generation of women engineers

Dr. Nur Sarma is an electrical and electronics engineer who recently started
teaching at Düzce University in Turkey after completing her Ph.D. degree
at The University of Manchester in
the United Kingdom and her master's
degree in power systems at Sakarya
University in Turkey. As a research
associate and soon-to-be assistant professor, Sarma is the only female academic in the Department of Electrical
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2018.2810419
Date of publication: 8 May 2018

JUNE 2018

and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester.
Her Ph.D. project for the Power Conversion Group investigated condition
monitoring and fault detection techniques for wind turbines. She helped
find common electrical and mechanical
faults in doubly fed induction generator topologies. During her Ph.D. work,
she participated on various teams to
solve complex engineering problems and
strengthen her researching skills. Sarma
also worked as a teaching assistant to
support undergraduate, M.Sc. degree,
and Ph.D. degree students in their work.
She also improved her communication skills by presenting at the Ninth
IEEE International Electric Machines
and Drives Conference in Idaho, United States, and the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Renewable
Energy Research and Applications
(ICRERA 2016) in Birmingham, United
Kingdom. She was awarded the Best
Paper Prize for her paper presented at
ICRERA 2016. She also wrote a conference report for the U.K. Magnetics
Society that was selected as the best
conference report. This led to receiving the Denis Hadfield Award from
the U.K. Magnetics Society and being
selected as a student committee member of the society for 2016-2017, where
she represented students in meetings
and organized and cochaired seminars
for the society.

Early Start
Born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey,
Sarma grew up in a house that always
had science books around. Her pediatrician father left anatomy books for everyone to read, involved her while fixing
things, and was a major influence on her
interest in engineering. Sarma recalls
spending time helping her father change
lightbulbs and holding the chair for him
as a little girl.
Sarma said she has been interested in
science subjects her whole life. Students
in Turkey must select a field of study by
their second year of high school, and
she liked math and geometry, so she
chose the science track. At the end of
high school, students take university

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2018