Spotlights

It’s hard to become something you can’t see.

My first job with Stanford was with the Stanford Overseas Studies program in Kyoto, Japan.

Stanford has been my professional home for 20 years; I’ve been in the Chemistry department, the School of Medicine and the Institutional Review Board, and the Stanford Hospital, where I spent time in the OB/GYN and cardiovascular specialties.

My Stanford roots start way back – I was actually born here at Stanford Hospital.

I’ve always been interested in how you can use mathematics to model and solve real-world problems.

Two of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the years are the importance of taking advantage of opportunities, and the value of learning to love what you’re doing.

Both my parents are lawyers, but my dad’s always been a tinkerer, making furniture and getting his electrician’s license to do the wiring in our home.

I’m the Student Services Manager in the Chemical Engineering department, where I’ve been for three years.

My husband and I moved here from Taiwan almost six years ago, where I had been a high school teacher for 10 years, and I considered it an adventure.

I study soft composites and soft robotic systems for use in minimally invasive biomedical devices.

I’ve been in Electrical Engineering for nine years where I’m now the Director of Student and Academic Services.

My parents, who are both doctors, instilled in me a love of biology.

To me, engineering is all about using scientific principles to design and improve our natural world.

I’m the Director of Finance and Operations (DFO) for the Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering (ICME), which is a degree-granting interdisciplinary institute where students study mathematical modeling, scientific computing and advanced computational algorithms for engineering and science applications.

I’ve been at Stanford for 16 years, with the last four as director of engineering research administration.

I came to analytics after earning a PhD in linguistics, where I learned I love working in universities and solving logic puzzles but also that applied problem-solving was a better fit for me than academic research.

I’m a group lead responsible for the Mechanics and Computation and the Biomechanics groups in the Mechanical Engineering department.

I am a senior research aerospace engineer at the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford Engineering, and the associate director of the Stanford PSAAP-III Center dedicated to exascale computing in rocket propulsion.

#IAmAnEngineer: I work on developing algorithms that help robots understand the world around them, and that teach them how to move safely around humans.

When the pandemic happened, I started watching videos on the water situation in developing nations – and I was really surprised that even here in the Caribbean, where I’m from, we have countries with serious water issues.

Ethiopia, my country, is endowed with precious gifts of nature: fertile soil, a favorable climate with thirteen months of sunshine, and abundant water.