by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (865) · May 5th, 2013 · Add a Comment
Today in History – May 5, 1809 – Mary Kies is the first woman to receive a U.S. patent. Prior to the U.S. Patent Act of 1790, only men could author a patent. Even after the federal law was passed, women couldn’t patent as most states did not allow women to legally own property. For example, there is much speculation that the authorship of the cotton gin patent of 1794 should have included Catherine Greene on the patent, as well as that of the African American slaves who also were not allowed to patent.
Mary Kies’ invention was a process for weaving straw with silk or thread. Alas the patent file was destroyed in the great Patent Office fire in 1836 and an exact copy of the patent is no longer available. Kies invention has been credited for boosting the U.S. hat industry. Even First Lady, Dolley Madison praised her contributions. Until about 1840, most of the other 20 patents issued to women concerned applications that women saw in their everyday work: apparel, tools, cook stoves, and fire places.
Below I highlight some of our other blogs on women’s contributions to engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship.
Did you know that Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler, motivated by her daughter Barbie and her friends play behavior? My blog of February 13 goes over the history of Barbie and Mattel’s decision and design process in announcing the new Computer Engineer Barbie.
My daughter, Arianne Agogino Gieringer wrote the April 25th blog on Florence Rena Sabin, the first woman elected to National Academy of Science. Dr. Florence Rena Sabin, Professor of Histology in the Johns Hopkins Medical School was also the first woman to be a full professor in that institution and also the first woman to be President of the American Association of Anatomists.
Patricia Galloway, first female president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), blogs on Elsie Eaves – first female engineer in ASCE to be elected as a full member on March 14, 1927.
Lucy Sanders, CEO of the Center for Women in Information Technology blogs on the unveiling of the ENIAC on February 14, 1946, the world’s first digital electronic computer, as well as on the contributions of women in computing.
Jasmina Vujic, Chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of California at Berkeley, blogs on Lise Meitner and her groundbreaking publication that first introduced the world to nuclear fission on February 11, 1939.
Chad-Eric Montgommery blogs on two African American women. On March 1, 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first African American woman to receive a medical degree. Also see the blog on Sara Breedlove Walker, the first self-made millionairess hair product inventions for African American women.
Pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Helen Taussig, was one of the doctors at Johns Hopkins who performed the first open heart surgery on November 29, 1944.
I enjoyed researching the blog for November 13, 1913 – Mary Phelps Jacobs invents modern bra. And also for the one on Dr. Mary Walker, the first female army surgeon to be awarded the Medal of Honor on November 11, 1875.
Check out the Engineering Pathway‘s many educational resources on women in engineering, women in information technology, women inventors and gender equity. One of my favorite resources is FairerScience, with practical advice on how to develop gender equitable classrooms and practices in math, science and engineering.
For a more indepth analysis of the issues associated with gender equity in our faculties and recommended solutions, read our “most commented” resource – the National Academies’ Beyond Bias and Barriers report. My editorial on the report was published in ASEE Prism, November 2006, vol. 16 (3). We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions as well.
Tags: Engineering Management · Gender Equity
by Alice AgoginocloseAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (865) · May 3rd, 2013 · Add a Comment
Today in History – May 3, 1997 – Garry Kasparov, reigning World Chess Champion, wins first of six chess games against IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer. The event was the twentieth century version of John Henry’s “man against machine”. The event was viewed by millions of chess and computing fans who were able witness the competition live on this Web site, which now serves as the official archive.
The triumph of “man against machine” was not to happen, however, as in the shocking finale on May 11th World Champion Garry Kasparov resigned 19 moves into Game 6 and lost in little more than an hour. This was the first time a current world champion had lost a tournament match to a computer. Match commentator Yasser Seirawan was stunned: “What we just witnessed was a landmark achievement in chess . . . I absolutely didn’t expect this to happen.”
Check out the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on the Kasparov and Deep Blue, artificial intelligence and history of computing. For more educational resources, see our electrical engineering education, computer science education and computer engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.
Tags: Computer Engineering · Computer Science · Computing · Electrical Engineering · Information Systems · Information Technology · Software Engineering
by Alice AgoginocloseAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (865) · April 22nd, 2013 · Add a Comment
Today in History – April 22, 1970 – First Earth Day. Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, says that the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. He wanted President Kennedy to give visibility to pollution and the environmental degradation that was appearing throughout the country, but was going unnoticed by the political establishment. The anti-Vietnam War demonstrations called “teach-ins” were popular on college campuses and he decided to organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment, tapping into both the energy of the student anti-war movement and the environmental cause. A Sunday, November 30, 1969, New York Times article by Gladwin Hill forecast that this was going to be a massive event:
“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’ …
Senator Gaylord Nelson explains that Earth Day worked “because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated.”
Today with global warming and another energy crises, sustainability is a top international concern and an estimated 1 billion people will do something to observe the anniversary of the first Earth Day. People will participate in marches and protests, family and community activities, clean-up days, tree-planting events, saving water, saving energy, nature walks, and sustainability events. A coalition of U.S. government agencies provides more on the history of Earth Day, environmental progress and Earth Day activities.
I am pleased to see a dramatic change in government action to aggressively work on climate and environmental issues. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson challenges all Americans to “begin building the green economy“, Department of Energy’s Steven Chu tackling global warming.
Expressions like “Green is the new black”, “Green is the new red, white and blue” and “green commerce”, such as that highlighted in ABC’s “Green Gadgets for Earth Day” news, demonstrate that green design is big business today. Alas some of these efforts are really “green washing” and are more effective at ringing up sales than in helping the environment. We should encourage life cycle analysis thinking with our students to seriously look at the long term environmental impact of new products, energy options and strategies.
The Engineering Pathway has a number of resources on green design, manufacturing and sustainability as well as on environmental ethics. For more educational resources, see our agricultural engineering education, environmental engineering education and chemical engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines, including interdisciplinary communities such as the Green Design and Sustainable Engineering education community.
Tags: Environmental Engineering · General Engineering, Engineering Science
by Alice AgoginocloseAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (865) · April 21st, 2013 · Add a Comment
Today in History – April 21, 1997 – Timothy Leary and Gene Roddenberry launched into orbit. LSD guru Timothy Leary and “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry (left image) hitched a ride into space, along with 22 other people as part of a new commercial “memorial space flight” venture of Texas-based Celestis Inc. The Spanish Pegasus rocket took off from the Canary Islands and propelled ashes of the “founders flight” into orbit, contained within small lipstick-size vials (center image) that would orbit the Earth for six years and then completely burn up when they re-entered the atmosphere. Roddenberry and Leary were ideal candidates for the first memorial space flight, with careers that focused on “outer” and “inner” space, respectively.
Although this experiment in spreading the ashes of cremated dignitaries into space got all of the publicity, the main mission of the launch was a joint project between the University of California-Berkeley and a Spanish aerospace institute with the goal of launching Spain’s first research satellite.
Although I never met Roddenberry, his body of work had a big influence on me and inspired me to pursue a career in technology. He was a colleague of childhood friend of my family science fiction writer Jack Williamson. They were both inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Timothy Leary called our house once to talk to my husband. It was kind of interesting to overhear the conversation. I think of them being together as explorers of inner and outer spaces.
Also on this date in 1994, the first extra-solar planets were discovered. These planets were orbiting a neutron star, PSR B1257+12, during a large search for pulsars conducted in 1990 with the giant, 305-m Arecibo radiotelescope.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on extra-solar planets, pulsars and aerospace engineering. For curricular resources, visit the Aerospace Engineering Education community site.
Tags: Aerospace Engineering · BioEngineering and Biomedical Engineering · Biological Systems and Agricultural Engineering · Chemical, Biochemical, Biomolecular Engineering · Engineering Management · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Geological Engineering · Surveying and Geomatics Engineerings
by Larry Genalo
closeAuthor: Larry Genalo
Name: Larry Genalo
Email: genalo@iastate.edu
Site: http://mse.iastate.edu/who-we-are/people/faculty/larry-genalo.html
About: Professor and Associate Chair
Iowa State University
Materials Science and Engineering
2220A Hoover Hall
Ames, IA 50011-2300
Phone: 515-294-4722
Fax: 515-294-5444
genalo@iastate.eduSee Authors Posts (12) · April 20th, 2013 · Add a Comment
Today in History – April 20, 1940 – RCA Demonstrates Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The history of the SEM begins in 1928 and RCA’s demonstration in 1940. In 1965 the first SEM was marketed by the Cambridge Instrument Company. The provided link includes an article that details the history of the SEM from 1928 to 1965. The author (McMullan), himself an important contributor to this field, traces developments such as the first attempts to image solids (Ruska 1933 and the more successful Von Borries 1940).He discusses von Ardenne’s 1938 highly magnified probe and Mahl’s 1941 transmission electron microscope (TEM).
The author speaks at some length about the Cambridge microscopes since this is where he worked with Oatley and added significant contributions to the field. Other contributors from around the world are detailed. Since this is an excellent article on the history of the SEM until 1965, added here will be a few contributions since that year.
An environmental scanning electron microscope, since it doesn’t need to operate in a vacuum like a standard SEM. Allows for the examination of almost any sample under any gaseous condition. Danilatos in the 1980s first used the term environmental SEM and the first commercial environmental SEM was produced by Electroscan.
In the 1990s Chumbley at Iowa State University, working with R.J. Lee Group, successfully created a remote, web-based control for a SEM. He calls this Project ExCel. This microscope allows pre-collegiate teachers to use the SEM in their classroom by remotely logging in to the SEM at Iowa State and controlling it over the internet. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’seducational resources on SEMs and microscropy or view our Materials Engineering Education and our Ceramic Engineering Education community sites.
Also on this date in 1902 the Curies isolate radium and in 1964 the first picture phone is demonstrated. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s nuclear engineering, information technology and picture phones.
Tags: Ceramic Engineering · Electrical Engineering · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Materials Engineering
