February 6, 2020 –
Sharon Hsu and Cheyenne Chavez oversee UCI’s Women in Information & Computer Sciences Club.
On Wednesday, Feb. 5, upper-division undergraduates,
graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in STEM
fields attended a lunch talk focused on making mentoring
and internship connections.
The program, “This is What a Scientist/Engineer Looks
Like,” was sponsored by UCI’s Office of Inclusive
Excellence, CALIT2 and the UCI Office of Access &
Inclusion. Presentations and discussions were designed
to help students in STEM fields – particularly women and
students of color – to enhance mentoring experiences and
benefit fully from internships and research training
opportunities.
Third-year biomedical engineering graduate student, Courtney Kay Carlson, offers tips to students seeking a fellowship.
The event featured brief talks by Cheyenne Chavez,
a senior in informatics, and Sharon Hsu, a senior
in computer science. The women oversee UCI’s
Women in Information & Computer Sciences
Club (WICS), an organization that serves to
empower women and minorities in the information
and computer science field.
Courtney Kay Carlson, a third-year biomedical engineering
graduate student, shared her experiences and expertise in
tailoring a winning fellowship application. Carlson has
been the recipient of both the American Heart Association
Predoctoral Fellowship and the prestigious NSF Graduate
Research Fellowship Program. She works in the lab of
Assistant Professor Chang Liu; her research includes
engineering mammalian cells to “remember” their own
history in their DNA and then optimizing those cells to study
congenital heart disease.
Stacy Branham, assistant professor in informatics and interim faculty co-director of the Masters in HCI Design program speaks at the STEM event.
The final speaker, Stacy Branham is an assistant
professor in informatics and the interim faculty co-director
of the Masters in HCI Design program at UCI. Her
research has garnered more than $600,000 in support
from the NSF, Toyota and TRX Systems, Inc.
“I look at you and have hope. We can literally change the
face of engineering,” said Branham, whose undergraduate
computer engineering class had fewer than 5 percent women.
Branham shared three practical tips for succeeding in
a STEM career: Find your people, make your dream CV
and invite yourself. Inviting yourself is a way to
increase your visibility, which leads to more
opportunities, she explained. To better demonstrate,
she noted, “I invited myself to give
this talk today.”
Presentations were followed by a Q&A with representatives from
the university’s Office of Access & Inclusion, Division of Career
Pathways, Student Achievement Guided by
Experience (SAGE) Scholars and UROP.
– Sharon Henry
