• What is your job title?
  
• Please give a brief description of your job, specifying what you do each day.
  
• What have you been working on or teaching lately?
  
• What most interests you in your job?
  
• What do you like least about your job?
  
• What has been your career path?
  
• Was there any person who inspired you to do what you are doing today?
  
• What attracted you to this career when you were in high school?
  
• What careers in your field do you see as promising?
  
• What advice do you have for young women who want to work in your field?

Q: What is your job title?
A: Principal Hardware Engineer
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Q:  Please give a brief description of your job, specifying what you do
each day.
A: Specify, design and test circuit modules.  Every day is different. Some days, I write the specification of what I'm going to design.  We get the requirements from our customers on what they want us to make for them. Sometimes, they just want us to change a certain part of a big computer or data switch that they already have or they want us to design a whole new one. We have to figure out what they really want and write down how we're going to do it.  I'll be part of a team and I'm only responsible for one part of the design.

Some days, I do the design.  After I know what needs to be built, I have to research the parts that need to go on the circuit module.  I'll bring in different vendors that make chips or silicon that do a certain function. They'll tell us what they have now and what they'll have in the future. For instance, I need a compact flash on my circuit.  This is the same type of card that goes into digital cameras.  When my module was designed last summer, 96 MB flashes were available but the vendor told us that bigger ones would be coming out this year.  So far, we've tested 96, 128, 320 and 360 MB.

Using logic, LEDs, disks, connectors, CPUs, and other type of parts, I'll design the circuit module.  Other people in my group will review the specification and design to make sure I understood what was supposed to be designed, that the design will work and that the design was done correctly. I'll be a part of a team that will review what others have designed.

Then, the circuit module needs to get built.  I need to give the manufacturer a BOM (Bill of Materials) which is just a list of the parts on my board.  I also need to give them the directions on how to build the module; how big is it, how are the parts connected, do the parts go on the top side or the bottom side.

I get the module back and the really exciting part happens.  In the lab, I get to plug the circuit module in and see if it really is doing what I think it's supposed to be doing.  This is always a nerve-wracking moment. Usually, it does most of what I think it will do.  There's always some assumption that wasn't quite right and will need to be fixed and made better.

Once the circuit module is working by itself, it needs to be tested with all the other designs of the bigger project.  I need to verify that each and every function works exactly as it's supposed to do and I need to find out ways to break it.
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Q:  What have you been working on or teaching lately?
A: I've been working a circuit module that is the closest thing to the central control of a big data switch.  It's the first part of the big box to come up when it's turned on and it's suppose to provide the timing (literally - the date and time) to every other part of the system. It contains a disk and compact flash to store data and it has the internal communication of the box.  Every other circuit module in the big box has to talk through my circuit module.
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Q:  What most interest you in your job?
A: I like the specification and design of the project.  That's the time when you use your creative and problem solving skills the most.  The best part is the first time you add power to the circuit module and sees that it works.
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Q:  What do you like the least about your job?
A: Testing and design verification. You have to check every part, every wire and make sure it looks like you thought it would.  If it doesn't, you have to figure out why and how to fix it.  You also have to test it under extreme conditions like heat. We actually will put our parts in a big oven. This part can be tedious.

The other part is the waiting for the next project which usually involves trying to get new customers or funding (money for the project you want to do).  This is the time when you feel out of control.  Engineers like to be in control.
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Q:  What has your career path been?
A: Out of college, I went to Digital Equipment Corporation and designed ASICS (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) which was a chip that helped address memory RAMS. I worked for 13 years at Digital working on various chips, leading a design team, designing circuit modules, and becoming a manager of a team that designed small computer servers.

I went to Stratus Computers as the manager of a hardware team and then a program manager.  A program manager makes sure that all parts of the team, marketing, manufacturing, software engineering, hardware engineering, customer service and sales all agree on what the next steps of a project should be.  I made sure that everyone knew what the schedule should be, I ordered parts and test equipment, I held meetings and wrote up minutes so everyone knew what was going on.  I made presentations to customers so they could track the progress of the program and answered any questions they had. I worked on various projects but none really finished because the company was bought by Ascend and then Lucent.

Currently, I'm working for a telecommunications startup that is making core data switch that will be bought by big communications companies.  I went from being a manager back to being a individual designer.
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Q:  Was there any person who inspired you to do what you're doing today?
A: There was no single person who inspired me. I've been inspired by various teachers and through women I've met through SWE (the Society of Women Engineers).  My husband, whom I met at the College Engineering School of Boston University, also inspires me daily.  We often discuss tricky circuits or cool pieces of software or a particularly strange problem that we've been able to solve.
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Q:  What attracted you to this career when you were in high school?
A: Math.  I actually didn't know what an engineer was when I was in high school. I really liked math and was good in science and I thought I'd either be a math teacher or a scientist.  But neither of those careers really appealed to me. My younger sister suggested I look into engineering. It seemed to be the right blend of math, science and being practical.  I still wasn't sure, so I went to Boston University.  If I didn't like engineering, the university still had a lot of other paths that I could pursue. The first time I made something that I designed and made the LED blink, I was hooked.
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Q:  What careers in your field do you see as promising for the future?
A: Engineering is very cyclical.  Some years, everyone wants hardware engineers and then other years they want software engineers.  I think being able to write (program) applications for the internet should be very promising.  Weather prediction modeling also needs lots of help.
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Q: What advice do you have for young women who want to work in your field  someday?
A: Take apart things.  It seems that many kids understand computers. They can play games or program the computer but I think actually seeing what's inside the computer is helpful.  Being on a computer is virtual. Opening up a car, cell phone, DVD player, or the little doodads that come in happy meals that light up and squeak is an excellent way to start to understand how things work.  Hardware engineers like to touch things and make them better.  You have to understand how they work before you can make them better.
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