WIE activities at 2015 International Symposium on Applications of Ferroelectrics

The WIE Panel Session was held on Monday 25 May-2015, 13:00 - 14:00 at the conference center. This year's event addressed an important challenge that many women in engineering fields face: the "impostor syndrome". The Imposter Syndrome is a term describing successful people that cannot internalize their accomplishments. It overwhelmingly affects successful women in science and technology fields, who feel like they don't belong and that all their accomplishments are simply due to luck.

The session started by an introduction and background provided by the moderator, Prof. Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb (Georgia Tech) and continued with a discussion of the personal experiences of a panel of accomplished scientists: Prof. Susan Troller-McKinstry (Penn State, USA), Prof. Barbara Malic (Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia) and Prof. Jacob Jones (NCSU, USA). The panelists discussed what makes/made them feel like an imposter and how they deal/dealt with it. The presentations were then followed by an open-floor discussion and exchange with the audience. The panel was attended by approximately 45 people, including both early stage researchers and well-established scientists and professionals.