IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007 - 9

01mwie01-amperes.qxd

1/4/08

1:50 PM

The network also created a new interdisciplinary-based postgraduate curriculum, based on feedback from women
regarding their future education and
career, women executives with postgraduate training in new technologies, women
starting a new career, and women immigrants. The main activities initiated by
this network include research regarding
the number of women students and professors, of which important parts were
presented in this contribution; building
relationships with career women; developing a mentor's curriculum, mentor's seminaries, information days, Web site-based
information; and the design of a womenfriendly postgraduate curriculum. All
this information can be freely accessed as
previously referred [4], including information on conferences such as ICIE
2007 Third International Conference on
Interdisciplinarity in Education and
MULTI FORUM 2007 International
Forum for multiculturality, multiethnicity, and multidisciplinarity in European
Higher Education and Research.
It is worth noting that the key to the
successful increase in the percentage of
women in engineering studies and careers
is addressing women at their early decision
points in time. Therefore, it is important to
attract, motivate, and guide young women
toward engineering and technology. The
most attractive way to do this is to embody
both sciences and engineering in interdisciplinary courses. In nearly every prestigious university such curricula exists at the
level of master's degree, graduate, and even
permanent education courses. A very simple example is biomedical engineering,
which successfully combines medicine
with (control) engineering. A manifold of
applications where an increased number of

Page 9

female engineers are involved can be summarized under the title of modeling and
control in biomedical applications [5],
drug-dosing control in anesthesia and diabetes, rehabilitation systems for gait and
motion control, artificial ventilation, and
diagnosis-based modeling of the respiratory system. One may only take a good look
around to realize that in most of these
applications women play a key role.
Another important aspect in higher
education is to offer equal mobility opportunities to women and men. Although
there is no difference when it comes to
granter evaluation, there should be special student exchange grants with courses
or research programs that are both attractive and accessible to women. For example, women tend to be more interested in
combining medical and control engineering sciences than engineering alone;
another example is the combination of
economics with modeling and control in
decision-making systems and supply
chain management. In this way, cross disciplinarity is ensured, and women can
enjoy both the nontechnical aspects in
medicine and economics and the abstracttechnical background of control.

Looking Forward
to the Bright Future
As a young woman working toward her
Ph.D. degree in the cross-disciplinary
topic of biomedical engineering at
UGent, I found great pleasure in finding
that most of the issues discussed in [6]
were helpful hints and encouraging
thoughts. There is no one path to ensure
a successful career for women in engineering, but there are a manifold of
guidelines waiting to be considered.

Acknowledgments
100

89
79

Number

80
60
Female
40
21
20
0
4

Male

11
Professors

Assistants

Overall staff gender-distribution at FirW in 2004.

I would like to thank Prof.
Robin De Keyser Chairman of Internationalisation at Ghent University,
Belgium, for being such a
dedicated mentor and a
striving promoter of several projects involving
female students and
female researchers in
Engineering.

WINTER 2007/2008

Read More About It
[1] H. Sahin and L. Güvenç, "Household robotics," IEEE
Control Syst. Mag., vol. 27, pp. 20-23, Apr. 2007.
[2] "Women for science-IAC advisory report," InterAcademy Council, Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
2006.
[3] National Statistical Profiles for EU Member States
& Associated Countries [Online] Available:
ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/improbing/docs/
[4] Opening Up Electrical Engineering, Computer
Technologies and Applied Sciences to Successful
Women Careers, ESTIA-Net, [Online] Available:
www.estiatn.net
[5] C. Ionescu and R. De Keyser, Some Challenging Feedback-Control Applications in Biomedical Systems, J. Inf. Technol., University of
Silesia - Poland, Vol.9, ISSN 1642-6037, pp.
35-46, 2005.
[6] B. Lazarus, L. Ritter and S. Ambrose, The
Woman's Guide to Navigating the Ph.D. in Engineering and Science New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 2001.

-Clara Ionescu,
Faculty of Engineering
Department of Electrical Energy,
Systems and Automation
Ghent University, Belgium.

IEEE WIE
"BEST COMPANIES" AWARD
IEEE WIE is accepting nominations for its "Best
Companies for Women to Work" award. We
want to hear what makes your company the
best work environment for women. Include
examples of programs, support groups or initiatives that the company has instituted to
make the work environment more inclusive for
its employees. The nominations should include
employee and/or student intern testimonials.
Companies that employ engineers and/or scientists are eligible.
The nomination essay should consist of no
more than 1,500 words and should include
the name and address of the company being
nominated and the nominator's mailing
address, email, phone and fax number. Send
nominations to: wie-research@ieee.org.
Applications will be judged by a panel of
national experts in workforce diversity and by
engineering and science leaders from various
science, technology, engineering and math
(STEM) disciplines. The top ten companies will
be announced in the June 2008 issue of the
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine. The
award will be presented at a special IEEE WIE
event to honor the winners and the winning
company will be profiled in the magazine. The
deadline for nominations is 1 March 2008.

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/improbing/docs/ http://www.estiatn.net

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007