The College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences will host the Women’s Career Conversations Luncheon for all female students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors on Friday, February 6 at 12:00 p.m. in the Hinckley Center Assembly Hall.
The event will include a lunch and a panel of four women in various science, technology, engineering, and math fields both in academia and industry. This event is in conjunction with the winter STEM Career Fair and provides students in STEM majors the opportunity to learn from successful women who have pursued STEM careers. Come with questions to get a female’s point of view on opportunities and challenges in STEM careers.
Cindy Snow, the CPMS alumni board representative, will be in attendance at the luncheon. Snow was one of the first women to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science from BYU. She has worked at Intel Corporation and as an adjunct faculty member at BYU. In 2009, Snow received the Technology Trailblazer Award from the Women Tech Council of Utah.
Go here to register for the luncheon.
Panelists:
Sarah Rollins is an acoustician and technology designer at Spectrum Engineers in Salt Lake City. Rollins received a BS in applied physics and an MS in physics from BYU in 2003 and 2005, respectively. She worked as a research assistant at BYU from 2002 to 2005, specifically researching acoustical studies of the LDS Conference Center and Salt Lake Tabernacle, anechoic measurements of regular polyhedron loudspeakers, and LabVIEW programming for a NASA project. After she graduated, Rollins worked for Sparling in Seattle, Washington, for six years before starting work at Spectrum Engineers in 2012. She is currently an active member of the ASA.
Rella Christensen is the co-founder of Clinical Research Associates where she served as director for twenty-seven years. She is currently the team leader of Technologies in Restoratives and Caries Research, a non-profit institute dedicated to in-depth and long-term clinical studies of restorative materials, preventive dentistry, and dental caries. Christensen received a BS in dental hygiene from the University of Southern California in 1960 and worked as a dental hygienist for over twenty-five years and as a dental laboratory technician for three years. In 1986 Christensen returned to school and earned a PhD in physiology with an emphasis on microbiology and completed a post-graduate course in anaerobic microbiology at Virginia Polytechnic State University. Christensen founded the expanded function dental hygiene program at the University of Colorado and served as its first director. She is a member of the American Academy of Esthetic Dentistry and the International and American Associations for Dental Research. As a non-dentist, she has been inducted into the International College of Dentists, the Academy of General Dentistry, and the Academy of Dentistry International as an Honorary Member. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from Utah Valley University and serves on the National Advisory Board for the BYU School of Life Sciences.
Stacey Smith is an assistant research professor in the BYU Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the X-ray Diffraction facility manager. Smith graduated summa cum laude from BYU with a B.S. in chemistry in 2006 and went on to obtain a PhD in physical chemistry from BYU in 2012. Following her doctoral work, Smith worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she pursued additional studies in X-ray crystallography. She then returned to BYU to head the X-ray diffraction facilities in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Irene Shpigelman is a senior technologist at Goldman Sachs. In her current role, she oversees the global Network and Telephony Operations teams, which are responsible for maintenance, support, and implementation of the Goldman Sachs global network and telephony environments. This includes network support of data centers in the US, Europe, and Asia, looking after over 11,000 network devices and over 2,000 carrier links; 75,000 phones and turrets; VOIP servers; trader systems; gateways; call centers/managers; voice recording; and voicemail across the firm. Shpigelman also co-heads WIT (Women in Technology) in Salt Lake City. Shpigelman earned a BS in computer science from Binghamton University in New York. She started her career at Goldman Sachs in 2001 as a new associate in their New York office. She has held multiple roles throughout her career within technology including network engineer, security engineer, and manager of global teams. In 2012, Shpigelman moved to Salt Lake City to build and manage the network and telephony teams.