Women Academics Elected to the National Academy of Engineering

It is no secret that women are vastly underrepresented in engineering disciplines. Women earned less than a quarter of all doctoral degrees in engineering fields. A generation ago the percentage of women earning engineering doctorates was closer to 10 percent.

Given that there were so few women who have earned doctorates in engineering fields over the past several decades, it is not surprising that today very few women are inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, a society that honors people with memberships based usually on a lifetime of achievement in the field.

Recently, the National Academy of Engineering announced its 2014 class of new fellows. According to WIAReport‘s analysis, only eight of the 67 new members are women. Thus, women are just 11.9 percent of the new members. A year ago, there were five women among 69 new members. In 2012, there were seven women among the 66 new members elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

(L to R) M. Katherine Banks, Katherine Whittaker Ferrara, Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos, Naomi Halas, Geraldine Knatz, and Jennifer Rexford

Of the eight new women elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014, six have current ties to academia:

M. Katherine Banks is vice chancellor and dean of engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station. She also holds the Harold J. Haynes Dean’s Chair. The academy cited her contributions to engineering education and for research on petroleum contamination. Dr. Banks is a graduate of the University of Florida. She earned a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Duke University.

Katherine Whittaker Ferrara is Distinguished Professor and the founding chair of the department of biomedical engineering at the University of California at Davis. She was honored with membership for her contributions to theory and applications of biomedical ultrasonics. Professor Ferrara is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. She holds a master’s degree from California State University, Sacramento and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California at Davis.

Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos is the Robert and Marcy Haber Endowed Professor in Energy Sustainability at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Her research focuses on more efficient production of fuels and chemicals. Dr. Flytzani-Stephanopoulos is a graduate of the National Technical University in Athens, Greece. She earned a master’s degree at the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Naomi Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She was honored  by the academy for nanoscale engineering of optical resonances and lineshapes. Professor Halas is a graduate of La Salle University in Philadelphia. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

Geraldine Knatz is a lecturer at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She recently retired as executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.  She was honored by the academy for the engineering and development of environmentally clean seaports. Dr. Knatz is a graduate of Rutgers University. She holds a master’s degree in environmental engineering and a Ph.D. in biological science from the University of Southern California.

Jennifer Rexford is the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering in the department of computer science at Princeton University in New Jersey. Her research is focused on the operational stability of large computer networks. Professor Rexford is a graduate of Princeton University. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan. Dr. Rexford has been on the faculty at Princeton since 2005.