International Women in Engineering Day is an annual celebration of the outstanding contributions of women engineers. The theme of this year’s Women in Engineering Day is “Engineering Heroes,” so we reached out to hear the stories of just a few of our Cyclone Engineering heroes, who are innovating in their research and inspiring and educating the next generation of women engineers.
Today (and every day) we celebrate women Cyclone Engineers, like Elnaz Ebrahimi, a postdoctoral research associate in the department of agriculture and biosystems engineering; she has been at Iowa State since 2018.
When she was asked who her engineering hero is, she said, “God is the only role-model I have. To become a successful engineer or scientist, sometimes you need to create your own inspiration, because you may never encounter another woman who has gone through similar challenges in professional life.” She urges women to establish impactful goals and define what success means to them as individuals and what drives them to seek engineering in the first place.
As a woman in engineering, Ebrahimi “encourages future engineers and scientists to develop their skills and knowledge based on strategic goals, thinking outside the box, and not being afraid of challenges, diversity, and trying new things.”
Her engineering superpower: is “faithfulness and commitment to God” at the first place, then at the professional level answering questions related to the effects of soil degradation on crop yield production. She is using the cropping system models to predict yield production to help next generation of scientists and farmers in the future to make best management decisions.