IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2017 - 53

field but many. She was passionate
about medicine, science, engineering,
and technology, and she was determined to put them all to work helping
others. When it came time to decide
on a degree, with much encourageGoel addresses global health
ment from her mother, she decided to
challenges
pursue biomedical engineering. She
received a B.S. degree in biomedical
Lisa Goel was born and raised in a rural
engineering from Boston University
town in Mississippi. Her father, a genand an M.S. degree in biomedical engieral and vascular surgeon as well as a
neering from Tufts University.
family physician, moved to this small
A fter graduation, Goel went to
town because of its great need for docwork, combining her background in
tors. She was inspired
biomedicine, engineering, and techby his "daily service
nology to join a mission-driven, cuta n d d e d i c a t io n
ting-edge organization, Nanobiosym.
toward helping
Its work is at the intersection of nanpeople who could
otechnology, biomedicine, and physnot afford basic
ics-or nanobiophysics. The mission
health care," and
of Nanobioysm is "to address some
she knew that,
of our world's greatest global health
like her father, she
Lisa Goel
challenges."
wanted to spend her
Her job includes a mix of technollife helping others.
ogy and operations-based projects, and
She may have considered becoming
every day brings its own set of chala physician like her father, but throughlenges. As a trained biomedical engiout her childhood, Goel developed other
neer, she relishes any opportunity to be
interests that pointed her in a different
hands on. Goel loves that Nanobioysm
direction. For her, science, technology,
is "driven to do good for the world" and
engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
that she gets to apply her engineering
was a family affair, and growing up she
skills on a daily basis.
had three role models. Along with her
"Throughout my career I found
father, her mother also nurtured a love
supportive mentors, and taking initiaof STEM through play, and her older
tive on exciting projects helped to
sister inspired Goel with her own
further nurture and inspire
interests in STEM. Goel grew
m y c a re er i n S T E M ,"
up playing with LEGO
Nanobioysm
she says. "My excitebricks and other buildment and passion for
ing toys, and she paris "driven to do
STEM is what has
ticipated in science
good for the world,"
led me to do what
fairs at a young age.
and Goel gets to
I do today. STEM
She found herself
apply her engineering has helped me gain
hooked on these sciskills on a daily
greater insight into
ence fairs, where she
my field of work. I
enjoyed the process
basis.
would like to encourof "identifying exciting
age all women today who
problems, creating projmight be considering a career
ects, applying the scientific
in STEM, or even pursuing a career,
method, and presenting her scientific
to keep at it and pursue areas that
findings," she explains.
you are passionate about. It makes
By the time Goel went to college,
your day that much more exciting
she was interested in not just one
and fulfilling."

Intersecting Nano,
Biomedicine, and Physics

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2017.2746370
Date of publication: 8 November 2017

Offering Decision Support
Feigh provides counsel to industry
and students
"My parents told me that by the time I
was five years old, they knew they had
an engineer on their hands," says Karen
Feigh. "The question was, just what
kind?" How prescient of them; though
Feigh did ultimately choose distinct
specialties for her degrees. As the current associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology's (Georgia Tech's)
School of Aerospace Engineering, she
has experienced a career path that is
interdisciplinary, spanning aeronautics,
industrial engineering, human integrated systems, and more. As a recent
appointee to the IEEE's Transactions
on Human-Machine Systems (THMS)
Editorial Board, she is looking forward
to bringing her wide perspective and
expertise in the intersection of humans
and engineered systems to the journal
review process.
"THMS is a pretty young journal, but
I got involved with it early on because so
much of my work is at this cross section
of humans and engineered systems,"
she explains. THMS is a publication by
the IEEE's Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) Society, which Feigh calls "a
great home to find" because, although
she publishes in the aeronautics realm,
there wasn't previously a place to publish her interdisciplinary work. "The
most frustrating thing is to go out and
do really expansive work and then feel
that you have to split your work into
papers that are focused on individual
parts," she describes. "You want to show
what you can accomplish by putting these
perspectives together, which is beyond
what you can do when you approach
them separately."
Now on the editorial board for THMS,
she plans to support other authors who
are bridging human factors and engineering together. Says Feigh, "[SMC] is
a really fun place to find people doing
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2017.2746371

-Katianne Williams

DECEMBER 2017

Date of publication: 8 November 2017

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

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