For the third year in a row, Penn Engineering’s Advancing Women in Engineering program, dedicated to recruiting, retaining and promoting all female-identified students in the School, participated in the ‘I Look Like an Engineer’ social media movement.
Penn Engineering’s Advancing Women in Engineering (AWE) program, dedicated to recruiting, retaining and promoting all female-identified students in the School, participated in the “I Look Like an Engineer” social media movement for the third year in a row. The movement, aimed at promoting diversity around underrepresented groups like women and people of color, was started by software developer Isis Anchalee in 2015.
Francesca Cimino, member of AWE and a rising senior in the Department of Bioengineering. (Image: Courtesy of Penn Engineering Today)
Francesca Cimino, member of AWE and a rising senior in the Department of Bioengineering, has always been passionate about changing the stereotypes and breaking down the barriers that prevent engineers of diverse backgrounds from thriving. She wanted to continue AWE’s tradition of participating in the movement to showcase the diversity already present within the field and prove that there is no single characteristic that defines an engineer.
“The ‘I Look Like an Engineer’ movement began in 2015, although AWE first participated during the 2018-19 school year. A board member who ran our social media accounts at the time thought it would serve as a good way to promote women in Penn Engineering,” says Cimino. “That year, they took pictures in the Levine Lobby and posted them, and some of them can still be found on our Instagram and Facebook pages. As a current member on our social media committee, I wanted to continue the campaign even though we were not all on campus, so I asked women engineers who were willing to participate to submit pictures of themselves that I could then edit a frame on and post on our social media.
“The goal for AWE has always been to break down the barriers that stereotypes have set for what defines an engineer. Through this campaign, we have been able to empower ourselves as women engineers and others around Penn who may feel like outsiders in their respective fields.”
Understanding order to disorder at the atomic scale opens possibilities for next-generation electronic devices
A Penn team has developed insight into the chemical and geometric mechanisms underlying the synthesis of new 2D materials, paving the way for next-gen devices, biomedical applications, and cleaner, quicker energy conversion and storage.
Penn buildings achieve LEED certifications, showcasing commitment to sustainability
Three recent building projects at the University of Pennsylvania have earned LEED Platinum, Gold, and Silver certifications, underscoring Penn’s ongoing commitment to sustainable design and construction.
OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Google vary widely in identifying hate speech
Neil Fasching and Yphtach Lelkes of the Annenberg School for Communication have found dramatic differences in how large language models classify hate speech, with especially large variations for language about certain demographic groups, raising concerns about bias and disproportionate harm.
