WOMEN OF COLOR AWARD WINNERS N
atalya Aoki graduated a valedictorian in 2006 and started Plebe Summer — the seven-week training program required of incoming freshmen at the U.S.
Naval Academy. Today, she is an aerospace engineering major with a minor in Russian and a track record for inspiring young people to pursue careers in STEM fields.
At the beginning of the spring semester 2009, she started volunteering with the Academy’s Candidate Visit Weekend and mini-STEM camps for Plebes and high school students. In the summer, she served as an academic leader for the Sum- mer STEM program. She assisted teachers and aided students in learning robotics, bridge building, and other subjects. She led four one-hour rotations each day during the two one- week sessions. Each rotation had about 25 middle and high students—a total of 100 students per week.
During the fall semester the same year, Midshipman Aoki and a classmate co-created and edited a DVD recording the con- struction of a Sea Perch— a foot long underwater remotely operated vehicle made out of PVC pipes— and then dissemi- nated the instructional video to teachers across the country.
The Sea Perch Program, started by the MIT Sea Grant College Program in 2003, is used to teach students the basics of sci- ence, robotics and engineering. Students around the world are using Sea Perches to collect and enter water quality data into the Sea Perch Data Bank, an international water quality database.
Midshipman Aoki has helped scores of elementary and middle school students in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, and Northern Virginia build their own Sea Perches and test them in nearby bodies of water. She also had the opportunity to teach Sea Perch building to elementary school students in New Zealand, as part of a Lafayette College study class on the effects of climate change.
eadership in research is the courage to create new inno- vations. Analee Miranda demonstrates this in her Ph.D. studies and her courage to bridge technology gaps. As an operations research intern in the Air Force Research Laboratory, she is seeking to improve radar technology with the development of new algorithms, which are based on innovative areas of mathematics. Applications include radar, geophysics, and medical imaging. Thus far into her two-year on-the-job training at the AFRL, she has applied her outstand- ing abilities and interests to the Air Force mission.
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On top of her academic work at Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti- tute, she was president of the local chapter of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. She gave talks at confer- ences, arranged networking events, and offered volunteer tutoring in mathematics. Ms. Miranda is passionate about in- creasing the presence of diverse groups in the math and hard science fields. As a result, she has represented Rensselaer at diversity graduate school fairs. She is a member of the Pi Mu Epsilon Honorary National Mathematics Society, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in the Sciences, and SHPE.
] Natalya Aoki [ Student
United States Naval Academy
www.womenofcolor.net
At AFRL, she is continuing her efforts, which include arrang- ing events for prospective graduate students such as the AFRL Sensors chief scientist’s visit to RPI, and mentoring an un- dergraduate who is doing her senior project at the Air Force Institute of Technology. Last summer, she co-organized the first Air Force Research Laboratory Graduate Student Panel. The event invited summer interns and employees to learn about the process of applying to and choosing a graduate school. A panel of graduate student interns, from universities nationwide, described their graduate school experience and took questions from attendees. Ms. Miranda assisted in co- ordinating the event by gathering graduate school material, compiling pertinent statistics, and creating an information sheet choosing a graduate school.
WOMENOFCOLOR | FALL 2010 49 ] Analee Miranda [
Operations Research Intern Air Force Research Laboratory
2010
STUDENT LEADERSHIP
STUDENT LEADERSHIP
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