Mexico’s First-Ever Woman President Is Energy Scientist
Environmental engineer-turned politician Claudia Sheinbaum is poised to become the first woman president of Mexico after winning the national election on June 2. She prevailed over another woman candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, with roughly 60% of the vote, according to Reuters. Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s 66th president
effective Oct. 1.
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Sheinbaum is also the first president of Jewish ancestry in a country that is primarily Catholic. Mexican authorities suggest her victory is in part attributable to efforts to promote gender equity in a nation that prohibited women from voting until 1955.
A member of the country’s leftist party known as Morena, Sheinbaum is a progressive who succeeds Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who served for six years, the country’s maximum term. Her campaign prioritized addressing inequality, sustainable development, environmental conservation, and reducing crime throughout the country, which has faced challenges within the criminal justice system and with gangs that control many areas of the country, including some local governments.
Although Sheinbaum spent most of her career in academia, she was politically active, advocating for social and environmental causes. She entered politics in 2000 following her appointment as secretary of the environment for the Mexico City Ministry of the Environment under López Obrador, who was then Mexico City mayor. In this role, she spearheaded innovative initiatives aimed at promoting sustainability and combating environmental degradation. She led the implementation of the Metrobus transit system and worked on an infrastructure project to alleviate traffic congestion.
In 2015, Sheinbaum was elected mayor of Tlalpan, a borough in southern Mexico City. Three years later, she was elected mayor of Mexico City. During that time — which included the COVID-19 pandemic — she focused on enhancing public transportation, improving water resource management, promoting sustainability, and establishing online registration for vaccinations. Sheinbaum was also credited with lowering the city’s violent crime rate, including a 50% drop in homicides, according to the Los Angeles Times. Her efforts included establishing community policing models, professionalizing police officers, and improving investigations, mirroring some of the models developed in the United States.
Sheinbaum holds three degrees from the National Autonomous University of Mexico — a bachelor’s in physics and master’s and doctorate degrees in energy engineering. She also completed a four-year academic stay for her doctoral research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Her area of specialty is renewable energy and climate change. She served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
NAE Inducts Engineering Safety Expert
Deborah Grubbe, P.E., has achieved much in a 40-year career in the private engineering industry, resulting in her recent induction into the National Academy of Engineering, the highest professional distinction afforded an engineer.
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Grubbe is recognized for her contributions and leadership in improving engineering safety practices in the chemical process industries. She is president and owner of Operations and Safety Solutions LLC of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, which she established in 2009. As a process safety leadership firm, the company improves the use of hard and soft assets and the development of safety cultures in the oil and gas, chemical, health care, construction, and aerospace industries.
She began her career as a chemical and project engineer at DuPont, where she served for 27 years in roles with increasing responsibility and oversight. Her work spanned the gamut: operations, manufacturing, design and field construction, hazardous materials, engineering technology, plant startups, process safety unit activities, and more. She later served as vice president of safety change management at BP and as a leader in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ Center for Ethics, where she helped the organization develop meaningful ways to serve its members with respect to ethics. She is a guest lecturer in ethics and process safety management at Purdue University, where she earned a B.S. in chemical engineering.
Grubbe has served on numerous government and academic advisory boards, using her knowledge of volunteer and not-for-profit governance and experience in safety leadership, workplace culture, and cultural diversity. She serves as a principal consultant for DuPont; a member of the advisory board for advanced safety and engineering management at The University of Alabama at Birmingham; and president of the board of trustees for the United Engineering Foundation, comprising representatives of several technical engineering organizations, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Grubbe holds a Six Sigma green belt and has a professional engineer license in Delaware. She also holds a certificate of postgraduate studies in chemical engineering from the University of Cambridge.
ASME Honors Bioengineer for Longtime Service
Jennifer Wayne, Ph.D., a professor in the department of biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech, recently received The American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Dedicated Service Award for her contributions to the society’s bioengineering division and her dedication to the organization.
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ASME honored her with its H.R. Lissner Medal in 2019 for her significant contributions to bioengineering, making her the first woman to receive the award. Dr. Wayne was recognized as an ASME fellow in 2007. She is also a fellow of the Orthopaedic Research Society for her leadership and research contributions in the musculoskeletal field, and a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering for developing a multifaceted approach to articular cartilage biomechanics, involving modeling and in vivo repair.
Dr. Wayne is an alumna of Virginia Tech, where she earned a B.S. in engineering science and mechanics. She returned in 2019 to head its biomedical engineering and mechanics department. Prior to this appointment, she served for 20 years as a faculty member in the departments of biomedical engineering and orthopedic surgery at Virginia Commonwealth University. While there, she helped develop the undergraduate program and curriculum. Dr. Wayne was also active in the accreditation process through ABET, formerly known as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, and continues to serve as a program evaluator. She also led the university’s orthopedic research laboratory.
Her research in orthopedic biomechanics focuses on experimental computational and theoretical models for injury prevention, surgical procedures, and creating research training programs for orthopedic residents and fellows, funded by the National Institutes of Health and other resources.
Dr. Wayne also holds an M.S. in biomedical engineering from Tulane University and a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of California San Diego.
Space Enthusiast Is New NASA Chief Engineer
Teresa Kinney has had a lifelong interest in space, stemming from an early childhood experience watching the Apollo 11 landing with her father, a space aficionado. Kinney later accompanied her dad on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center to see the launch of the American spacecraft that was half of the Apollo-Soyuz docking mission and to view the hardware used to build it.
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Fascinated by space, she enrolled in the University of Alabama and had several co-op experiences at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering and joined NASA as a full-time contractor.
She worked as a payload analyst on a range of projects, including the space shuttle solid rocket booster, Spacelab, and International Space Station programs. After working for almost three decades, she relocated and returned to school to earn an M.S. in industrial engineering for systems engineers at the University of Central Florida. She also attained certifications in welding, machining, and forklift and crane operation, which enabled her to help with large testing programs.
Kinney’s experience and training led NASA to appoint her chief engineer for the Gateway Deep Space Logistics project at the Kennedy Space Center, making her the first woman to serve as chief engineer of a NASA team. As the technical authority for the Gateway project, she is responsible for technical evaluations and recommendations to management. She oversees a team that ensures the soundness of all things related to technical functionality and structural capability and the safe delivery of equipment, supplies, consumables, and payloads to the future orbiting outpost.
Once completed, Gateway will be the first lunar orbiting station as part of the space agency’s return to the moon in the Artemis program.
Two NASA Scientists Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom
NASA astronaut Ellen Ochoa and astrophysicist Jane Rigby are among the 19 recipients this year of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Individuals chosen for the medal have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public, or private endeavors, according to a White House statement.
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Ellen Ochoa, Ph.D., is the first Hispanic woman to launch into space, the second woman astronaut to receive the medal, and the 10th astronaut to do so. Dr. Ochoa served as the 11th director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to Mission Control Center and the U.S. astronaut corps. She previously served as deputy center director and director of flight crew operations.
A specialist in the development of optical systems, Dr. Ochoa worked as a research engineer at Sandia National Laboratories and joined NASA’s Ames Research Center in 1988. She helped create several systems and methods that were awarded patents, including optical systems for the detection of imperfections in a repeating pattern and for the recognition of objects.
Dr. Ochoa transferred to Johnson Space Center two years later. Shortly thereafter she was selected as an astronaut to participate in a nine-day Space Transportation System mission — STS-56 — aboard the space shuttle Discovery. She used the space shuttle’s robotic arm to deploy and retrieve a satellite that observed the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona. The mission was devoted to collecting data about the relationship between the sun’s energy output and Earth’s atmosphere and how those factors affected the planet’s ozone layer.
On her subsequent three missions, Dr. Ochoa assisted in the study of Earth’s atmosphere and was among the first astronauts to enter the International Space Station, a multinational orbital laboratory constructed between 1998 and 2011. On her four space shuttle missions between 1993 and 2002, she logged more than 40 days, or nearly 1,000 hours, in Earth’s orbit.
In 2013, Dr. Ochoa became director of the Johnson Space Center, the second woman to hold the post. She served for five years and oversaw the selection of the first crews to launch on commercial spacecraft and first yearlong mission aboard the International Space Station.
Dr. Ochoa has received numerous awards for her role in the U.S. space program, including NASA’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal. She is a 2017 inductee of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on Merritt Island, Florida. The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers has an award named in her honor, which is presented annually to a Hispanic woman engineer or scientist who has made outstanding contributions in the field of aerospace engineering, including in management, administration, technology, and education. Schools bear her name today in California, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.
Dr. Ochoa holds a B.S. in physics from San Diego State University and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Jane Rigby, Ph.D., is a civil servant astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. She serves as the senior project scientist and lead for the James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful telescope used to explore the history of the universe.
Dr. Rigby worked on the development of the orbiting observatory for many years and then led the characterization of Webb’s science performance after it was deployed in deep space. Her contributions to the project included working with the team to certify the telescope’s scientific capabilities during its preoperational time in space. NASA launched the telescope on Dec. 25, 2021, and it began official operations in July 2022. Dr. Rigby also worked on the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra telescopes, among others.
Before coming to Goddard in 2010, Dr. Rigby worked as a Spitzer fellow and a Carnegie fellow at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, a research and astronomy-based facility for scientists, astronomers, and theorists.
Dr. Rigby holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Arizona and a B.S.in physics and a B.S. in astronomy and astrophysics from Penn State University. Her research and scientific interests focus on the development of new techniques for observing galaxy life cycles, star formation, and the growth of black holes in the center of galaxies. She has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and received the Out to Innovate 2022 LGBTQ+ Scientist of the Year award.
Business Journal Honors Founder of STEM Nonprofit
Houston Business Journal has included Kara Branch on its annual list of 40 under 40, a celebration of the city’s best and brightest professionals and emerging leaders in business and other industries.
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Branch is CEO of Black Girls Do Engineer Corp., a nonprofit organization she founded in June 2019 to “educate, elevate, and empower” young Black women after she few saw opportunities for those in her community in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and created a vision to address the problem.
When Branch held the inaugural meeting, it was the first time that many attendees were in the same room with other Black women engineers and scientists. One of her goals is to advocate for 2 million Black girls to choose STEM careers by 2050 and provide long-term support, access, and awareness designed to aid in their success.
Branch, a chemical engineer, is also a podcast host, keynote speaker, and founder of STEMXposed, a collection of STEM-focused learning materials for youths. She earned a B.S. in chemical engineering and an executive MBA at Prairie View A&M University. She holds a lean Six Sigma green belt.
The membership-based organization she founded is open to girls ages 6-21. Branch seeks to increase the presence of Black girls and young women in STEM fields by providing career-based experiences from industry-skilled STEM professionals. She has already helped participants go to college — an outcome of her commitment to support them throughout their STEM journeys.
To inspire Black girls to pursue STEM, she presents parents and community members with the opportunity to enroll their daughters in an immersive experience. Black Girls Do Engineer offers mentoring, personal development programs, hands-on STEM projects and activities, and career guidance based on insight from professionals in the STEM industry. Focus areas range from artificial intelligence and coding to aerospace and energy. Other enrichment programs include financial literacy, mentorship, upskilling, and college preparation. Older participants benefit from leadership development, life skills, mentorship, mastering career fairs, and deeper understanding of their career choices.
To date, the Houston nonprofit has engaged more than 1,000 girls, and Branch has launched two new chapters, in New Orleans and in Los Angeles.
Researcher Explores Durability of Fiber Materials
Fibers used to make protective vests worn by law enforcement and military personnel have a shelf life. Amy Engelbrecht-Wiggans, Ph.D., an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, is investigating ways to improve their durability by isolating when material failures begin. By exploring the point at which fiber composite materials begin to deteriorate and how the environment affects material, Dr. Engelbrecht-Wiggans believes it is possible to ensure longer-term reliability.
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“Part of what really fascinates me is understanding what is going on as the material is breaking,” said Dr. Engelbrecht-Wiggans, who leads the Fiber Composite Reliability Lab in the university’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering. “How is it breaking? What happens as one of the fibers breaks? How does that influence the rest of the fibers in the material?”
To answer these and other questions, the National Science Foundation awarded Dr. Engelbrecht-Wiggans a Faculty Career Development Award, known as the CAREER award, for “Understanding Fiber Bundle Failure Mechanics for Ultra-High Reliability Applications.” She will use computer modeling to investigate how fiber bundles behave, the impact of the environment, how load pressure influences materials performance, and how long the materials will remain effective.
According to Dr. Engelbrecht-Wiggans, bundle failure is caused by instability leading to collapse. Understanding the onset of instability and the lower range of failure distribution is critical to ensuring reliability. Her results could decrease the costs of structures made from fiber bundles.
Composite fibers are familiar materials — reinforced plastics or polymers, such as fiberglass — and are often used as alternatives for heavier metals. If combined or layered, they result in stronger structured materials, such as those used in body armor, bridge cables, and aerospace and automotive applications. Increased tensile strength and lighter weight can lower production and usage costs.
Dr. Engelbrecht-Wiggans earned a B.S. in theoretical and applied mechanics in 2011 from the University of Illinois. She completed a Ph.D. in 2017 at Cornell University, also in theoretical and applied mechanics. Following postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, she joined the Rochester faculty in 2021.
The CAREER award and her research expertise build on her early career work with NASA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as well as her interest in the art of knitting.
