WiSE Spring 2006 Distinguished Speaker: Dr. Vasundara Varadan
WiSE's annual event where a nationally known speaker is invited to address women in science and engineering.
Vasundara V. Varadan
George and Boyce Billingsley Chair & Distinguished Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Arkansas
vvvesm@engr.uark.edu
Women in Science and Engineering: Why so few?
In a world where technology dictates every aspect of our daily life, we are producing less engineers. Does this make sense? Omitting law, medicine and business degrees from the elite schools, there is a 30-50% salary differential between engineering and non-engineering jobs. Is this not sufficient to attract more women students to science and engineering? Today women outnumber men at US colleges and universities and the number of minorities has increased significantly over the last thirty years, so why are we losing market share of the women in inverse proportion? This talk will attempt to provide some perspective on this complex question using my personal experience as a minority woman in engineering, professional experience in academia and at NSF and research reports on this complicated subject.
Brief Bio:
Vasu Varadan obtained a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago in l974. She did post-doctoral research at Cornell University and served on the faculty at Ohio State. She was on the engineering faculty at the Pennsylvania State University for 22 years where she was Distinguished Professor of Engineering Science & Electrical Engineering. Dr. Varadan has also served as Division Director for Electrical & Communications Systems at NSF on an IPA assignment during 2002-2004. From January 2005, she has been at the University of Arkansas as the George and Boyce Billingsley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering.
Dr. Varadan has made seminal contributions to modeling and numerical simulation techniques for acoustic and elastodynamic scattering problems and to effective medium simulations for engineered composites. In the 80s, she developed the engineering exploitations of chirality for microwave composites and developed a unique measurement system for the characterization of microwave properties as a function of frequency and temperature in a non-contact, non-destructive manner. She co-founded HVS technologies, Inc. and has obtained recognition for providing innovative microwave measurement solutions for a variety of customers. In the 90s, Dr. Varadan developed an interest in Smart Materials, Adaptive or Intelligent Systems and Wireless Sensors and her research has spanned the gamut from closed loop numerical modeling of adaptive systems incorporating a full 3-D finite element smart system model, robust control theory and uncertainty modeling to the development of the first passive wireless SAW sensor. For the last four years, she has worked on the emerging field of metamaterials providing experimental evidence of negative permittivity and permeability in engineered microwave composites. Dr. Varadan has served as the thesis advisor for 29 M.S. degree students and 29 Ph.D. degree students. She has published over 270 journal papers and 250 conference proceedings papers. She is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, Institute of Physics , U.K. , Society of Photonics Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) and a Senior member of the IEEE. She is currently an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.
Dr. Varadan is interested in increasing the participation of women and underrepresented groups in science and engineering. She developed the MS WIZ program, one of the first early intervention programs to attract 11-14 year old girls to science and engineering. She served as a US delegate at the US-China Workshop for Women in Science and Technology at the United Nations Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995 and chaired the Commission for Women at Penn State and developed programs to train department heads on strategies for recruiting and developing women and minority faculty. She continued to pursue such activities at NSF.