Seminar Invites Notable Women to MIT for Discussion on Academic Careers

The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) recently hosted the second Civil and Environmental Engineering Rising Stars Workshop, aiming to promote future female leaders in the field and support their career launches.

This year's workshop featured a variety of events, including research presentations, lab tours, faculty-led panels, and networking opportunities with MIT faculty. The event was limited to women who have completed PhDs within the past five years and had research interests that align with civil and environmental engineering or related fields.

One of the panels, focused on the first few years of a faculty career, was held and featured Heald, Chisholm, Osorio, and Jadbabaie. Participants asked about the tenure process, mentoring, securing funding, establishing industrial connections, and building one's reputation in their fields. Another panel, on work-life balance, was held with Tal Cohen, Markus Buehler, Ulm, and Kroll participating. Participants asked about time management with families and careers, managing an academic career with a spouse, negotiating childcare, tips for efficient work, and balancing the many demands of working in academia.

Trilce Encarnacion, a PhD candidate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, found the job search and interview process panel to be the most valuable part of the workshop. Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, a postdoc at Princeton University, found the panel on the first few years of a faculty career to be a learning process in understanding the tenure-track in the US and at MIT.

Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, advised participants to interact with faculty members and each other, understand what it means to be a faculty member, and learn about the practical aspects of the application process. Chisholm advised participants to find a mentor outside of their specialty area, while Marelli stressed the importance of showing independence in research and the ability to differentiate oneself from previous work and start new projects.

Jadbabaie suggested that participants think about who their community will be and to which area of expertise they identify, and encouraged attending conferences and workshops and networking with people that know their work to build their reputation. Kroll emphasized the importance of looking at the bigger picture of work-life balance, and Ulm encouraged participants to develop hobbies aside from their research to exercise different parts of the brain and keep participants motivated outside of work.

Cynthia Barnhart, the Chancellor and Ford Professor of Engineering, spoke with participants during lunch on the second day of the workshop. Markus Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering and head of CEE, stated that the workshop aims to strengthen the pipeline to academia for women by demystifying the faculty career and creating a peer network for talented early-career women.

Tal Cohen, assistant professor of CEE and mechanical engineering, participated in the 2015 Rising Stars Workshop and exemplifies the goals of the workshop: to establish valuable professional connections and explore possible career paths. The search results do not provide any information about the name of the head of the Steering Committee of the CEE Rising Stars Workshop or the year when Tal Cohen attended the sessions.

The workshop introduced participants to MIT and research conducted in CEE, offered career advice, and discussed aspects such as work-life balance, the faculty search process, and mentoring students. The goal of the CEE Rising Stars workshop is to strengthen the pipeline to academia for women by demystifying the faculty career and creating a peer network for talented early-career women. The participants were selected from an applicant pool of 100 women by a steering committee of MIT faculty, led by Colette Heald, associate professor of CEE and associate head of the department.