2016-2017 WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVES SEMINAR
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
(REAL) ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND STORIES

​Speaker Line-up


Building 200 Room 034 | 4:30-5:30pm | Thursdays
All are invited to attend!

Jan 11
INTRODUCTION TO SEMINAR

Professor Sheri Sheppard introduced the seminar and speaker lineup. Attendees discussed what makes them happy and their 
professional goals, and generated questions to ask speakers. A panel of current women engineering graduate students shared some of 
their experiences and questions in navigating life.

Jan 18
DONNA BELL

Lab Director, Ford Motor Co, Research & Innovation Center
Donna Bell is currently the Director of Operations at Ford's Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto, CA where she is responsible for ensuring the continued growth and operation of 
Ford's Palo Alto research and innovation lab, and connecting new technologies and innovations that are created in Silicon Valley with Ford Motor Company products and services. Donna has been with Ford Motor Company for more than 20 years. Most of Donna's career at Ford has been spent in the Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering (EESE) Organization within Product Development, where she has held various technical and leadership roles in body module electronics design, electrical systems design and analysis, purchasing for driver information components, quality as the 6-Sigma Project Champion Electrical systems, and the Electrical Program Module Team (PMT) leader launching key Ford vehicles and technologies. Prior to her current role, Donna was the Global Product Development Quality Manager for Electrical at Ford Motor Company where she is responsible for Electrical and Electronic Systems Quality globally. Prior to Ford, Donna spent the first stages of her engineering career at Dow Chemical Company where she tested and built process control computers.

Donna has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Lawrence Technological 
University (Southfield, MI), a Master of Science degree in Electronics and Computer Control 
Systems and a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management from Wayne State 
University (Detroit, MI). She is currently enrolled in the Global Executive Track Ph.D. Program at Wayne State University, where she is currently researching innovation.

Donna was recently the president of the Lawrence Tech Alumni Association Board of Directors 
where she was responsible for establishing scholarships and programs for ETU students and 
alumni. She has been a member, including president, of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Detroit Professionals. And has supported and been a member of the Society of
Women Engineers (SWE) and Engineering Society of Detroit. Donna makes it a point to 'give ​back' to the community, by participating in programs such as the NSBE's Pre-College Initiative and the Society of Women Engineers Girl's Engineering Exploration Day. Donna is an active member of Ford's African Ancestry Network (FMN), where she leads the Membership and Development programs. She is a member of Ford's Professional Women's Network (PWN) and 
mentors as much as she can to aspiring engineers.

Jan 25
KAKANI KATIJA

Principle Engineer and Investigator, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Kakani received her PhD in Bioengineering at Caltech and specializes in biological fluid mechanics 
and in situ imaging methods. She is currently a Principal Engineer and Investigator at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), with binding provided by the Packard Foundation. Kakani has been named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2011 and a Kavli Research Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences in 2013. When not in/on the lab/ocean, she can be found with her husband and dog roaming around the West in a Volkswagen Eurovan Weekender.

Feb 1
AMY HErr

Professor of Bioengineering, UC Berkeley
one of the 'founding mothers' of the Stanford ME Women's Group
Amy E. Herr received a BS degree in Engineering Et Applied Science from the California Institute of Technology and MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where 
 she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She is currently the Lester John ft Lynne Dewar Lloyd Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a Chan-Zuckerberg Bahub Investigator. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she was a staff member in the Biosystems Research Group at Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA). Her research interests include bioinstrumentation innovation to advance quantitation in the biosciences & biomedicine, in particular the study and application of electrokinetic phenomena in multi-stage, heterogeneous bioanalytical microsystems. Her pedagogical interests are in bioengineering design and transport. To support the international technical community, she actively serves on the technical program committee of several international conferences.

Among other honors, Professor Herr has been recognized as a Visionary Awardee by the City of Berkeley (2017; one of three) and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator (2017.2022). For  teaching and mentoring, she has received the 2012 Ellen Weaver Award from the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), the 2012 Outstanding Instructor Award in Bioengineering  (Bioengineering Honor Society student vote) and a 2007 Outstanding Mentor Award from Sandia National Laboratories.

She is faculty advisor to the UC Berkeley chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (OWE) and the Graduate Women in Engineering (GWE), as well as assisted with establishing the UC Berkeley chapter of the National Science Policy Group (NSPG).

Feb 8
SRINIJA SRINIVASAN

Stanford University Board of Trustees
formerly Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Yahoo
Srinija Srinivasan is Co-founder of Loove, a developing venture in Brooklyn, NY creating a sustainable model for the production. presentation, and distribution of music. She currently serves as a Vice Chair of Stanford University Board of Trustees, she is a member of the US Partnership on Mobility born Poverty, and the Commission on Presidential Scholars, appointed in 2010 by President Obama. In 1995 Srinija joined Yahoo! Inc. as their fifth employee, where she served as Vice President, Editor in Chief until stepping down in 2010. During her t 5-year tenure with the company, she led a range of editorial and policy functions globally. including the organization and evolution of the Yahoo! Directory, network editorial standards, privacy and data use, advertising standards, youth safety, community guidelines, accessibility, and corporate responsibility. Srinija previously chaired the board of non-profit SHAZZ through the planning and campaign for the SHAZZ Center, which opened in January 2013. She is a member of the 2000 Class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute and holds a BS with distinction from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems. She lives bicoastally in Palo Alto, CA and Brooklyn, NY.

Feb 15
MARYAM ESKANDARI

Principal at MIIM Designs
Maryam Eskandari is the Principal at MIIM Designs, an architectural design practice dedicated to the advancement of design, dialogue with history, theory, and context, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Eskandari received her Bachelors of Architecture degree from the University of Arizona where she won the I. Douglas Mac Neil Architecture Fellowship in design. She received her Masters of Science in Architecture in history and theory, (SMArchS HTC) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's prestigious Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture where she was the Aga than Fellow for two years. Currently, she is the founding principal of MIIM Designs and 
teaches architecture and design at Harvard University and Boston Architectural College. Prior to establishing MIIM Designs, Eskandari was Project Designer at DLR Group, where she led several award-winning projects. MIIM Designs has been recognized with numerous awards, publications, and exhibitions. In 2012, MIIM Designs was awarded the 'Faith and Form Award' from the American Institute of Architects. Recently, MIIM Designs was the architect for the new Children's Museum of Manhattan's America to Zanzibar exhibit in NM York. Eskandari serves on the Board of Open Architecture Collaborative, Harvard's FDR Foundation, and the 1947 Partition Archives.

Feb 22
ANNA-KATRINA SHEDLETSKY

CEO & Co-founder of Instrumental, Inc.
Anna-Katrina is the CEO and founder of Instrumental, a manufacturing data company that uses machine learning to find anomalies on consumer electronics assembly lines. She has two degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, and went on to work as a Product Design Engineer at Apple. During her six years there, she designed mechanical components for three iPods and led system product design for the Apple Watch Series 1. After spending over 300 days in China finding and fixing issues on manufacturing lines, she started Instrumental to build an intelligent quality system to modernize manufacturing. Instrumental customers range from startups to Fortune 500s and span consumer electronics, apparel, and more.

Mar 1
WENDY GU

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
Xun Wendy Gu is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She was a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Paul Alivisatos at UC Berkeley. She is interested in the size-dependent mechanical properties of architected nanomaterial such as metallic and polymeric    nano-lattices, pillars, and particles.
Wendy received her PhD at the California Institute of Technology, where she worked with Prof. Julia Greer on the strength, deformation and fracture of lithographed metallic nanostructures. Before starting graduate school, Wendy was a Fulbright Scholar with Prof. Ernesto Joselevich at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Wendy received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2009.

Mar 8
MARGOT GERRITSEN

Director, Stanford Institute for Computational Ex Mathematical Engineering 
Senior Associate Dean for Educational Initiatives, Stanford University
" I was born and raised in the Netherlands. After receiving my MS degree M Applied Mathematics at the University of Delft, I moved to the U.S. in search of hillier and sunnier places. In 1996 I received my Ph.D. in Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics at Stanford University. Before returning to Stanford in 2001, I spent nearly five years in Auckland, New Zealand as a faculty member in the Department of Engineering Science.

I'm a professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford, interested in computer simulation and mathematical analysis of engineering processes, and the Director of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering.

I specialize in renewable and fossil energy production. I am also active in coastal ocean dynamics and yacht design, as well as several areas in computational mathematics including search algorithm design and matrix computations."

Mar 15 
EUGENIE RIVES

Operations Manager, X (formerly called Google X)
Eugenie is the General Manager of a stealth-mode Robotics project at X, the Alphabet company pioneering work on moonshot projects like self.driving cars, energy kites, smart contact lenses and Internet from balloons. Eugenie is also passionate about bringing more diversity to the tech industry; she co-leads the Women@X group.

Prior to her role at X, Eugenie led Operations for Google in France and Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, 
Nigeria, Uganda, Francophone Africa). Before Google, Eugenie worked for Alcatel in Mexico city, 
managing projects to connect cities and public infrastructure online.

Eugenie grew up in Paris, and has a degree in applied mathematics, a Master in Business and 
Management, and graduated from Singularity University in 2010.​