This effort will support approximately 50 women from US institutions to attend a research summit with 50 international participants to be held in 2009 in Europe. The objective of the summit is to develop new methods to enable meaningful and sustained research exchanges among American and international female engineering faculty, graduate students, and post doctoral fellows and to identify common issues faced by females pursuing careers in engineering that could benefit from a global strategy. The summit is designed to bring experts together to discuss recent research findings in the three thematic areas of energy systems, micro/nanotechnology and simulation based engineering. The meeting will expose participants to best practices in engaging in international research collaborations and will foster the initiation of research collaborations and the building of sustained relationships among the female participants. A summit application survey and an interview protocol will be used to better understand what is needed for female engineers to engage in international research collaborations..
This effort will explore a number of factors that may limit the advancement of female engineers engaged in research. It will provide a clear, visible pathway for females to pursue international collaborations and identify methods of securing funding for international collaborations from federal agencies, international sources. It will also generate a database of female faculty who are interested in conducting international research and identify common issues faced by females pursuing careers in engineering such as, inclusiveness in research endeavors, female?]friendly environments, family leave policies, ?gdual-career couple?h issues.
