WOMEN IN PULSED POWER
AND PLASMA SCIENCE

In conjunction with the 2007 IEEE Pulsed Power and Plasma Science (PPPS) Conference, the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) and the PPPS conference organizers jointly sponsored the “Women in Pulsed Power and Plasma Science” evening reception held on June 18 at the Convention Center in Albuquerque, NM. Approximately 80 people, half of whom were female, attended the social event, hosted by Dr. Kelly Hahn of Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). The invited speaker, Dr. Joan Woodard, Executive Vice President and Deputy Director of SNL, delivered a lively speech drawing from her own experiences throughout her career. Woodard concluded her talk with some interesting statistics regarding how women from around the world perceive themselves in the workplace in relation to their roles at home.
The intent of the reception was simply to give an opportunity for the female conference participants to convene in a social gathering. Events like this give the chance for women in the community to get to know each other, because there are so few women in the workplace in these particular fields. Of the approximately 1200 conference attendees, about 100 were women. Of these, about half were students and a third were from outside the United States.
The PPPS Conference, chaired by Prof. Edl Schamiloglu of the University of New Mexico, was a combination of two conferences, the 16th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference and 34th International Conference on Plasma Science. Technical topics included pulsed power accelerators, z-pinch plasmas, and high power microwaves, just to name a few.
The mission of WIE is to “inspire, engage, encourage, and empower IEEE women worldwide.” Interestingly, 2.5 % of members of the IEEE are WIE members. Of those, about a third are male.