inspiring connections

Inspiring
Connections

I am fortunate to find a profession that allows me to do what I love to do. I pride myself as a conscientious researcher with three key contributions that I consider my labors of love. I invest many extra hours on these activities because I value and enjoy the time needed to make these connections. I do not mind the quantitatively low yield because I know the quality is high.

Connecting with People

Making professional connections with people is rewarding to me. I enjoy meeting smart people who are passionate about their work. I am always curious to discover what new problems people are interested in, so I am not shy in approaching others about their work. After meeting many people with diverse research interests, I may realize that this new person I just met would benefit from talking to this other person I had met. I enjoy putting together people who should be working together because they share the same interests and complement one another's skills.

Making personal connections with people is rewarding to me. I enjoy building community spirit and comraderie, so I try to include everyone when I rally group outings at conferences, summer internship programs, and so on. I also volunteer in turn-taking shared duties. I believe what gets us through difficult times is the emotional support we lend one another. I know I have benefited from peers who have believed in my research abilities. Now that my peers are steadily graduating and entering the workforce, I am amazed at my global network of successful colleagues, and it is nice to be acknowledged by successful peers. (e.g., Howard Leung's PhD thesis)

Connecting with Research

Making ideological connections between seemingly unrelated topics is rewarding to me and how I believe I conduct research. I enjoy finding commonalities amongst our differences and drawing out analogies to make clear the connections. I find humbling how solutions already exist in disparate communities, and I feel empowered that my task is to find these connections. As an individual researcher, I love the intellectual challenge of finding unexplored problems and innovating novel solutions.

With every research project, I must first connect with the project by seeking inspiration and passion to pursue the work. I start by living real-world experiences about the topic, appreciating the nuances, making the details visceral, and acquiring a passion to motivate the work. By doing so, I empathize with the problem challenges, or I may be moved by a more compelling problem. Once I identify the problem to be solved, I meditate solutions outside my technical expertise. I release my mind from existing rules and tried solutions, opening to possibilities that better fit the problem. I expose my creativity to various forms of art, science fiction, cultures, and ideas. Out of this subconcious rumination is where I derive and refine my inspired solutions.

Connecting with Service

Before I gave much thought into what I would be studying in college and before I even knew what an engineer was, my high school math and science teachers all nominated me for some "future engineer" award from Society of Women Engineers. I was thankful for their vote of confidence in my math and science abilities, and I was liking what I learned about engineering careers. However, I was shocked and angry at some of the close-minded comments from men and women about a woman's inherently limited abilities in engineering careers. Thankfully, my female math and science teachers introduced me to this male-dominated field with a strong rally from SWE. I benefited and matured so much as a professional by being actively involved in a local chapter. I also learned the value of mentoring, volunteering services, and gender sensitivity. Later, I caught the programming bug, so I switched to be a computer science major. Even later, I stumbled across research, so I commmitted my studies towards a PhD. Throughout my educational careers, my two campaigns of community service remain the same: 1) promoting education and 2) promoting gender awareness.

Promoting Education: I enjoy volunteering as a mentor to students within the academic community or as a big sister for today's youths in general. I enjoy tutoring students in all subjects, and I enjoy reading to children whose first language is not English.

Intel Opportunity Scholarship program at Georgia Tech: I started with the first group of research mentors in Spring 2002. I mentored a CS female sophomore. In 2003, I mentored another CS female sophomore. In 2004, I mentored two male sophomores and a freshman.

Promoting Gender Awareness: My personal opinion is that gender issues for women in engineering is quite different than gender issues for women in computing. The former is more confrontational while the latter is more complacent.

systers: a very good national support community for cs women, and tons of links to further awesome resources
Grace Hopper celebration: I attended in 2000.
Within company work cultures, professional women organizations can provide advantageous resources. (e.g., SWE @ HP, TWG @ HP Labs)
College of Computing CyberSisters program: I was a 2002 "big sister " for a female CS PhD student.
College of Computing Women's student advisory board: We are helping to improve and support women@cc.
Boutwell, J. "Women quickly level the playing field at Tech" In Technique: Georgia Institute of Technology Student Newspaper, Friday, August 31, 2001, pp. 11. [.pdf]: My female classmates deferred a photo opportunity for this newspaper article about progressive enrollments of female CS students. Instead, my project was used because it was viewed as more interesting, but it also ironically involves the traditional woman's role of cooking at home.
I was disturbed by what I read in this book: McCorduck, Pamela, and Nancy Ramsey.The Futures of Women: Scenarios for the Twenty First Century. Addison-Wesley: Boston, 1996.