I want you all to think of something
that you use every single day let’s say
your car you drive it everywhere you
drive it to work in school and maybe
even on vacations and you expect it to
be efficient reliable comfortable and
also keep you safe but have you thought
about who makes all these parts that go
into making your car work or how are how
are these things designed engineers do
these things and in ears are the people
who work to make things and solve
real-world problems they could be
working on making a lightweight
comfortable shoe or they could be
designing the next big rollercoaster but
have you ever thought about if all the
components that are in your car today
right now if they’ve been perfectly
designed and if they’re the absolute
best that they could be no right it
requires a team of extremely diverse and
creative engineers to come up with new
and better designs every single year
when cars are released I’m sure we’ve
all heard about the advantages of
diversity research has shown that people
from different backgrounds work to
produce more innovative results because
of their own experiences perspective
thought process compared to people from
different from similar backgrounds along
with a high level of critical thinking
their approach to problems might be very
different based on their nationality
race age take for example the seat belt
in your car I know you get in you put it
on you don’t even think about it it’s
it’s involuntary but we expect it to
keep us safe right well it turns out the
women are 47 percent more likely to have
a serious injury in the case of a car
crash why because they used male dummy
drivers for all of their crash tests and
came up with a seat belt design that
worked best with those dimensions and
only in the year 2011 did they introduce
the male engineers that designed the
seatbelts perhaps it had never occurred
to them that people unlike themselves
might experience their designs very
differently and in a situation like this
wouldn’t you think that a more diverse
group of people would be able to come up
with a better design for a seatbelt that
worked with people of all shapes and
sizes I think they would so what I’m
really trying to say here is forty-nine
point six percent of the world’s
population is female but only twenty
percent of all engineering school
graduates are women and of all the
engineers that are women in today’s
world only eleven percent are girls so
why don’t we have enough Women Engineers
what is it that deters girls from going
into engineering I think as a society
were subconsciously inclined to think of
men in careers involving science and
technology engineering is perceived as a
career choice for men men who want to
wear yellow hard hats and build bridges
we lack women engineers and scientists
as role models and young girls today
need to see other girls or women just
like themselves doing the type of things
that they want to do to succeed in life
we think of people like Albert Einstein
and Steve Jobs as revolutionary men
who’ve contributed to the world of
science and technology but we forget
women like Katy Lamar who developed a
basis for modern communication systems
such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and Lillian
Gilbert who contributed to Industrial
Engineering by studying workforce
patterns and ergonomics I hope that we
will be able to inspire the next
generation and minimize if not eliminate
the social stigma that exists for girls
in STEM as I was doing a little research
for this presentation I came across
several articles that claim that women
when it comes to engineering are at a
slight
advantage and it’s because of something
that we overlook all the time
toys when we think about toys for girls
what are a few things that come to mind
Barbies doll houses Easy Bake Oven maybe
and what about toys for boys we think of
all the cool stuff right the lego sets
the racetracks the remote-control cars
well it turns out that construction sets
like Legos can help develop spatial
skills which is the ability to visualize
things in three dimensions in the mind’s
eye and it’s a critical skill for
engineers but almost half of the world’s
population playing with makeup and
kitchen sets are being deprived of
developing the skill at an early age as
I was growing up I was lucky enough to
have all sorts of toys I had plenty of
Barbie dolls and I had my own fleet of
Hot Wheel cars and LEGO sets and
remote-controlled airplanes and those
are toys meant for boys which is not the
case for a lot of little girls they’re
usually exposed to the toys from the
pink aisle I come from a family of
medical doctors and research scientists
and I’ve always had their encouragement
and support to pursue the path of
Science and Technology but for as long
as I can remember I either wanted to be
an astronaut because what kid doesn’t
love the idea of getting in a rocketship
and flying up into space or I wanted to
be a research scientist because that’s
what my parents are and I thought it was
the coolest job ever but despite being
exposed to all of these opportunities I
guess no one really told me about
engineering or what it is that engineers
really do so it never occurred to me as
engineering being a potential career
path because I had no idea what it was
as I was graduating high school I knew I
wanted to go to college but I had no
idea what I wanted to major in all I
knew was I loved science I liked
building things with my hands and I
wasn’t too bad at art so I sat down with
my
dad and we were brainstorming on what I
should pick as my major and he told me I
think you should go into engineering I
think you’d really enjoy it and at this
point I pictured myself driving a train
because I didn’t know what engineering
was I didn’t understand why he wanted me
to drive trains they made me sick but
that’s when he told me that with
engineering I would learn how things are
made I could learn how my iPod works and
how planes fly and maybe someday I could
be a part of making some really cool
things I’ve realized that the term
engineering is often misunderstood to be
this mundane job for people to fix
broken things but in fact it really is a
vast and creative field and is extremely
important in society when we think of
the word creative we think of drawings
and paintings and sculptures but we
rarely think about manufacturing yet
manufacturing is one of the original
forms or creation and we have
manufactured goods all around us that we
use everyday including the chair you’re
currently sitting on I know we don’t
think about this a lot but engineers
really are part artists part inventor
part scientist part architect part
mathematician part creative thinker and
there’s so many more parts to them
they’re responsible for designing space
shuttles and trying to find ways to
protect the environment from pollution
they’re not just limited to building
machines there are toy engineers who
come up with new toys every day and then
there are engineers who work with
special effects that go into movies and
there are also food engineers who come
up with better tasting ice cream so
after I graduated with my degree in
electrical engineering I knew I wanted
to try my hand at something a little
different maybe broaden my horizons so I
applied for graduate school here at
Florida State and stood it and today I
work with things that are very different
from what I could have possibly imagined
raise your hand if you know what a 3d
printer is
that’s a lot of people I’m sure most of
you have seen a 3d printer in person
printing really cool structures and if
you didn’t already know
3d printing kind of works like a hot
glue gun you put a solid plastic
material in and there’s a heater that
melts this material and it comes out of
the nozzle and you print structures
layer by layer and these structures
could be anything that you could think
of so 3d printing can be used with a
variety of materials to print various
types of objects it’s often
misunderstood that 3d printing is just
for making little trinkets and
prototypes and mock-ups thinks that we
don’t really need but 3d printing can
really be used to make functional
objects and with the right choice of
materials it can also be used for
advanced applications I’m sure you’ve
heard of all the people who have 3d
printed prosthetics for kids with
disabilities or 3d printers that are
able to build houses in less than 24
hours and there are people who are
making jewelry with 3d printers and some
people are even printing chocolate in
fact I use 3d printers for my research
where I develop a process where I use 3d
printing to make structures that can go
on airplanes that are lightweight but
also have the added functionality of
being resistant to lightning strikes so
remember what I said earlier about girls
having a disadvantage of not having to
develop spatial skills
I think 3d printing could be the answer
to that we’ve all played around with
Microsoft Paint as we were growing up if
we took that another step further and
encouraged today’s generation to learn
to draw in 3d I think that could make a
world of difference you see kids could
draw their structure in the software
printed out on a 3d printer and then
compared this physical object to their
drawing to truly see things in
perspective
3d printing software for kids already
exists and so do 3d printers we just
have to make sure that people are aware
of the existence of these technologies
and the advantages of introducing them
early enough in a child’s life because
that’s when they’re the most
impressionable and the types of
technologies you expose them to can
really affect their career choices in
the future teaching high school kids
about engineering concepts might be a
little too late because by then they
might have already made up their mind on
their choice of career or whatever
they’re passionate about 3d printing can
also be used to incorporate the
understanding of manufacturing and
design processes we don’t often think
about how the roads are made or how
buildings are built because they’ve
always kind of been there we don’t think
about how they’re manufactured when I
was a kid I thought things just
magically appeared at the store so
today’s generation of middle and high
school students already have access to
this technology either in the form of a
classroom curriculum or maybe as an
after-school activity and they get
hands-on experience you might even have
a sibling or a niece or a nephew that
has access to this technology and if
there are underprivileged or underfunded
schools that don’t have 3d printing in
their curriculum I urge you to encourage
them and support them thus I encourage
all of you to go and learn about the
vast applications that 3d printing has
to offer and encourage others to do so
as well
we should continue encouraging the
importance of different experiences in
younger generations to facilitate their
creativity and discovery instead of
restricting them to old social norms and
in doing so they can improve their
confidence and possibly choose
engineering as a career path in the
future because they will already have
the skill sets that they need to succeed
and so in doing this we can develop a
lot more diverse and better workforce
for the future so when you leave from
here today I want you to think instead
of stepping into a car that drives on
the
with four wheels you might be sitting in
a car in that flies in the air or maybe
even a teleportation device but that
that depends on the steps you take today
and that’s what’s going to affect the
future thank you [Applause]
that you use every single day let’s say
your car you drive it everywhere you
drive it to work in school and maybe
even on vacations and you expect it to
be efficient reliable comfortable and
also keep you safe but have you thought
about who makes all these parts that go
into making your car work or how are how
are these things designed engineers do
these things and in ears are the people
who work to make things and solve
real-world problems they could be
working on making a lightweight
comfortable shoe or they could be
designing the next big rollercoaster but
have you ever thought about if all the
components that are in your car today
right now if they’ve been perfectly
designed and if they’re the absolute
best that they could be no right it
requires a team of extremely diverse and
creative engineers to come up with new
and better designs every single year
when cars are released I’m sure we’ve
all heard about the advantages of
diversity research has shown that people
from different backgrounds work to
produce more innovative results because
of their own experiences perspective
thought process compared to people from
different from similar backgrounds along
with a high level of critical thinking
their approach to problems might be very
different based on their nationality
race age take for example the seat belt
in your car I know you get in you put it
on you don’t even think about it it’s
it’s involuntary but we expect it to
keep us safe right well it turns out the
women are 47 percent more likely to have
a serious injury in the case of a car
crash why because they used male dummy
drivers for all of their crash tests and
came up with a seat belt design that
worked best with those dimensions and
only in the year 2011 did they introduce
the male engineers that designed the
seatbelts perhaps it had never occurred
to them that people unlike themselves
might experience their designs very
differently and in a situation like this
wouldn’t you think that a more diverse
group of people would be able to come up
with a better design for a seatbelt that
worked with people of all shapes and
sizes I think they would so what I’m
really trying to say here is forty-nine
point six percent of the world’s
population is female but only twenty
percent of all engineering school
graduates are women and of all the
engineers that are women in today’s
world only eleven percent are girls so
why don’t we have enough Women Engineers
what is it that deters girls from going
into engineering I think as a society
were subconsciously inclined to think of
men in careers involving science and
technology engineering is perceived as a
career choice for men men who want to
wear yellow hard hats and build bridges
we lack women engineers and scientists
as role models and young girls today
need to see other girls or women just
like themselves doing the type of things
that they want to do to succeed in life
we think of people like Albert Einstein
and Steve Jobs as revolutionary men
who’ve contributed to the world of
science and technology but we forget
women like Katy Lamar who developed a
basis for modern communication systems
such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and Lillian
Gilbert who contributed to Industrial
Engineering by studying workforce
patterns and ergonomics I hope that we
will be able to inspire the next
generation and minimize if not eliminate
the social stigma that exists for girls
in STEM as I was doing a little research
for this presentation I came across
several articles that claim that women
when it comes to engineering are at a
slight
advantage and it’s because of something
that we overlook all the time
toys when we think about toys for girls
what are a few things that come to mind
Barbies doll houses Easy Bake Oven maybe
and what about toys for boys we think of
all the cool stuff right the lego sets
the racetracks the remote-control cars
well it turns out that construction sets
like Legos can help develop spatial
skills which is the ability to visualize
things in three dimensions in the mind’s
eye and it’s a critical skill for
engineers but almost half of the world’s
population playing with makeup and
kitchen sets are being deprived of
developing the skill at an early age as
I was growing up I was lucky enough to
have all sorts of toys I had plenty of
Barbie dolls and I had my own fleet of
Hot Wheel cars and LEGO sets and
remote-controlled airplanes and those
are toys meant for boys which is not the
case for a lot of little girls they’re
usually exposed to the toys from the
pink aisle I come from a family of
medical doctors and research scientists
and I’ve always had their encouragement
and support to pursue the path of
Science and Technology but for as long
as I can remember I either wanted to be
an astronaut because what kid doesn’t
love the idea of getting in a rocketship
and flying up into space or I wanted to
be a research scientist because that’s
what my parents are and I thought it was
the coolest job ever but despite being
exposed to all of these opportunities I
guess no one really told me about
engineering or what it is that engineers
really do so it never occurred to me as
engineering being a potential career
path because I had no idea what it was
as I was graduating high school I knew I
wanted to go to college but I had no
idea what I wanted to major in all I
knew was I loved science I liked
building things with my hands and I
wasn’t too bad at art so I sat down with
my
dad and we were brainstorming on what I
should pick as my major and he told me I
think you should go into engineering I
think you’d really enjoy it and at this
point I pictured myself driving a train
because I didn’t know what engineering
was I didn’t understand why he wanted me
to drive trains they made me sick but
that’s when he told me that with
engineering I would learn how things are
made I could learn how my iPod works and
how planes fly and maybe someday I could
be a part of making some really cool
things I’ve realized that the term
engineering is often misunderstood to be
this mundane job for people to fix
broken things but in fact it really is a
vast and creative field and is extremely
important in society when we think of
the word creative we think of drawings
and paintings and sculptures but we
rarely think about manufacturing yet
manufacturing is one of the original
forms or creation and we have
manufactured goods all around us that we
use everyday including the chair you’re
currently sitting on I know we don’t
think about this a lot but engineers
really are part artists part inventor
part scientist part architect part
mathematician part creative thinker and
there’s so many more parts to them
they’re responsible for designing space
shuttles and trying to find ways to
protect the environment from pollution
they’re not just limited to building
machines there are toy engineers who
come up with new toys every day and then
there are engineers who work with
special effects that go into movies and
there are also food engineers who come
up with better tasting ice cream so
after I graduated with my degree in
electrical engineering I knew I wanted
to try my hand at something a little
different maybe broaden my horizons so I
applied for graduate school here at
Florida State and stood it and today I
work with things that are very different
from what I could have possibly imagined
raise your hand if you know what a 3d
printer is
that’s a lot of people I’m sure most of
you have seen a 3d printer in person
printing really cool structures and if
you didn’t already know
3d printing kind of works like a hot
glue gun you put a solid plastic
material in and there’s a heater that
melts this material and it comes out of
the nozzle and you print structures
layer by layer and these structures
could be anything that you could think
of so 3d printing can be used with a
variety of materials to print various
types of objects it’s often
misunderstood that 3d printing is just
for making little trinkets and
prototypes and mock-ups thinks that we
don’t really need but 3d printing can
really be used to make functional
objects and with the right choice of
materials it can also be used for
advanced applications I’m sure you’ve
heard of all the people who have 3d
printed prosthetics for kids with
disabilities or 3d printers that are
able to build houses in less than 24
hours and there are people who are
making jewelry with 3d printers and some
people are even printing chocolate in
fact I use 3d printers for my research
where I develop a process where I use 3d
printing to make structures that can go
on airplanes that are lightweight but
also have the added functionality of
being resistant to lightning strikes so
remember what I said earlier about girls
having a disadvantage of not having to
develop spatial skills
I think 3d printing could be the answer
to that we’ve all played around with
Microsoft Paint as we were growing up if
we took that another step further and
encouraged today’s generation to learn
to draw in 3d I think that could make a
world of difference you see kids could
draw their structure in the software
printed out on a 3d printer and then
compared this physical object to their
drawing to truly see things in
perspective
3d printing software for kids already
exists and so do 3d printers we just
have to make sure that people are aware
of the existence of these technologies
and the advantages of introducing them
early enough in a child’s life because
that’s when they’re the most
impressionable and the types of
technologies you expose them to can
really affect their career choices in
the future teaching high school kids
about engineering concepts might be a
little too late because by then they
might have already made up their mind on
their choice of career or whatever
they’re passionate about 3d printing can
also be used to incorporate the
understanding of manufacturing and
design processes we don’t often think
about how the roads are made or how
buildings are built because they’ve
always kind of been there we don’t think
about how they’re manufactured when I
was a kid I thought things just
magically appeared at the store so
today’s generation of middle and high
school students already have access to
this technology either in the form of a
classroom curriculum or maybe as an
after-school activity and they get
hands-on experience you might even have
a sibling or a niece or a nephew that
has access to this technology and if
there are underprivileged or underfunded
schools that don’t have 3d printing in
their curriculum I urge you to encourage
them and support them thus I encourage
all of you to go and learn about the
vast applications that 3d printing has
to offer and encourage others to do so
as well
we should continue encouraging the
importance of different experiences in
younger generations to facilitate their
creativity and discovery instead of
restricting them to old social norms and
in doing so they can improve their
confidence and possibly choose
engineering as a career path in the
future because they will already have
the skill sets that they need to succeed
and so in doing this we can develop a
lot more diverse and better workforce
for the future so when you leave from
here today I want you to think instead
of stepping into a car that drives on
the
with four wheels you might be sitting in
a car in that flies in the air or maybe
even a teleportation device but that
that depends on the steps you take today
and that’s what’s going to affect the
future thank you [Applause]
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