150Women

Caroline Willard Baldwin (1869–1928) earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of Mechanics at Berkeley in 1892 and was selected to speak at commencement.  The College of Mechanics Baldwin went on to graduate study at Cornell University and became the first woman to receive a PhD in science in Physics from an American university. Her …

(taken from article by Robert Perkins) After earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota and master’s and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, Melany Hunt joined Caltech in 1988 as an assistant professor. She was named associate professor in 1995, professor in 2001, and Kenan Professor in 2012. She became Hayman Professor …

Corie L. Cobb received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley’s Mechanical Engineering Department in 2008 with dissertation title – “Case-based Reasoning for MEMS (Microelectromechanical Systems) Design Synthesis” – with Prof. Alice M. Agogino as her advisor. Within her doctoral program she majored in design and minored in information systems and materials science.  These are rigorous depth …

Grace X. Gu is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her PhD and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her current research focuses on creating new materials with superior properties …

Somayeh Sojoudi is an Associate Professor-In-Residence in the Departments of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her PhD degree in Control & Dynamical Systems from California Institute of Technology in 2013. She has been working on several interdisciplinary problems in optimization theory, control theory, machine …

Hannah Stuart is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the George Washington University in 2011. She then completed her MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 2013 and 2017 respectively. Her research interests include: Dexterous manipulation; …

Dr. Sara McMains is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include Geometric DFM (Design for Manufacturing) feedback, geometric solid modeling, CAD/CAM, GPU algorithms, computer aided process planning, layered manufacturing, computer graphics, visualization, virtual prototyping, and virtual reality. Her current research focuses on new techniques for accessibility …

Dr. Sherry Hsi received a B.S. degree in Engineering Science, Bioengineering at UC Berkeley in 1986. As an undergraduate student, she initiated a research project to use expert systems to configure communications devices with disabled children. Working with the Stanford’s Children’s Hospital and Mechanical Engineering Professor Alice Agogino, Sherry won a competitive UC president’s undergraduate …

Lisa Pruitt received her Ph.D. from Brown University and joined the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley in 1993. She has authored more than 300 publications in her research field of biomaterials, medical devices and failure analysis. She has received numerous awards. Her research has been recognized with a Congressional citation; a National Science …

Dr. Janet Ellzey received her BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Foundation Centennial Teaching Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research has spanned a …

Originally from Flagstaff, Arizona, Suzanne Singer is a member of the Diné (Navajo) tribe. She earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona and her Masters and PhD from UC Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering. Since graduating, she has had an incredibly successful and impressive career. She worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory …

Dr. Nancy Diaz-Elsayed graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and minor in Management in 2008. She obtained her MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 and 2013 from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), where she also received certificates in Engineering and Business for Sustainability …

Dr. Cynthia Hipwell received her M.S. and Ph.D. in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, and is currently a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. Hipwell is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and The Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Texas (TAMEST). …

Dr. Robin Coger earned both an MS and Ph.D at Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering. Coger is chair of the Council of Engineering Deans of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Her focus at North Carolina A&T ranges from advancing the global preparedness of students, highlighting the research of graduate students, to enhancing the innovation climate across …

Debbie G. Senesky is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department.  In addition, she is the Principal Investigator of the EXtreme Environment Microsystems Laboratory (XLab). Her research interests include the development of nanomaterials for extreme harsh environments, high-temperature electronics, and robust instrumentation for Venus exploration. In the past, she has …

Lydia L. Sohn received her A.B. (Chemistry and Physics, magna cum laude 1988), A. M. (Physics, 1990), and Ph.D. (Physics, 1992) from Harvard University. She was an NSF/NATO postdoctoral fellow at Delft University of Technology (1992-1993) and a postdoctoral fellow at AT&T Bell Laboratories (1993-1995). Sohn was on the Physics faculty at Princeton University (1993-2003) …

Squishy is an adjective not often associated with machines, but with the leadership of mechanical engineering professor Alice Agogino, it can now be considered a sought-after attribute for robust, deployable “tensegrity” robots. Agogino led researchers at Berkeley and Squishy Robotics, a company she co-founded, in the development of shape-shifting robots that could drop 600 feet …

Grace O’Connell’s engineering education began with breaking things. “Whenever anything broke in our house, before we threw it out, my dad would say, ‘Let’s take it apart just to look inside.’ Because it was already broken, we could break it even more. That was a lot of fun.” She’s parlayed that childlike curiosity into a …

While at Berkeley — where she served on the faculty for a decade — Pamela Eibeck established herself as a national leader in electronics cooling and 3D convective heat transfer, while becoming an early pioneer in multimedia learning. From Berkeley, she took her expertise in engineering and teaching to effectively lead several other institutions of …