This year's Women in Engineering panel, sponsored by the Power Engineering Society, will take a candid look at mentoring and its impacts on recruiting and retaining engineering talent in workplaces and academics. Special attention will be given to the mentoring and recruiting of women and under-represented groups within engineering. Panelists will discuss the benefits and requirements of successful mentoring programs, both formal and informal. The panel will also focus on describing efforts at the industry and academic levels to address the national challenge of the aging power engineering workforce. All are welcome.

Edina Bajrektarevic, operations engineer at the American Transmission Co., will lead the panel. Bajrektarevic provides support to system operation of the high-voltage electric transmission system that serves customers from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the Wisconsin-Illinois border in USA.

Oher panelists include:

Karen L. Butler-Purry serves as a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Texas A&M University.  In addition she currently serves as the coordinator of the Electric Power and Power Electronics group and director of the Electric Power and Power Electronics Institute in her department.

Prabha Kundur is president of Kundur Power System Solutions Inc., Toronto, Ontario. He served as the president and CEO of Powertech Labs Inc., the research and technology subsidiary of BC Hydro, from 1994 to 2006. Prior to joining Powertech, he worked at Ontario Hydro for nearly 25 years and held senior positions involving power system planning and design. 

Dagmar Niebur joined the National Science Foundation in March 2007 as a program director for the Power, Controls and Adaptive Networks Program of the Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems Division in the Directorate for Engineering. Her responsibilities within the Power, Controls and Adaptive Networks Program include Power and Energy Networks as well as Alternate Energy Sources.

Noel N. Schulz  has been a faculty member at Virginia Tech, the University of North Dakota, and MichiganTechnologicalUniversity prior to her appointment at Mississippi State in 2001. She currently holds the TVA Endowed Professorship in Power Systems Engineering.

Cheryl A. Warren has been employed by Central Hudson Gas and Electric Company in Poughkeepsie, New York; Power Technologies, Inc.in Schenectady, New York; and Navigant Consulting, Inc., in Albany, New York. She now works for National Grid, based in Albany, as the vice president of Asset Strategy and Investment Planning.