2012 C3E Award Winners
MITEI and DOE hosted an invitation-only Women in Clean Energy Symposium on September 28, 2012 for leaders who have helped advance the careers of women in clean energy – laying the foundation for a broader, continuing effort to support and enhance the educational and career opportunities for women in clean energy.
Meet the 2012 Winners
Corporate Implementation
Liz Porter
Program Director, ITA Enterprise Transport Management, Lockheed Martin
Ms. Porter is responsible for all personnel, equipment, tools, maintenance, materials, supervision, and other items and non-personal services necessary to perform U.S. Army ITA Transport Management. This includes a 24x7x365 network operations center, project management, and engineering services for 300 sites with more than 8,500 devices across four classifications of networks for more than 55,000 users. Previously, as the Director for Corporate Energy Initiatives at Lockheed Martin, she developed and executed the strategy for the Energy Campaign, working closely with Corporate Strategy and Business Development to grow the company’s business in the energy market.
Entrepreneurship and Innovative Business Models
Judy Dorsey
President and Principal Engineer, Brendle Group
Ms. Dorsey has 20 years of executive leadership experience in sustainability, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Her specialties include district-scale and community-scale planning in climate and energy, clean energy, sustainable economic development, organizational development, and net-zero energy and water initiatives. She has led the completion of more than 200 sustainability projects for more than 100 clients across 15 states. She co-founded the Colorado Clean Energy Cluster and helped spearhead two of its primary initiatives: the International Cleantech Network, a global network connecting the world’s leading cleantech clusters, and FortZED, an initiative to create one of the world’s largest active net-zero energy districts.
Education and Mentorship
Tracey Holloway
Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Professor Holloway works with the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and is a member of the Energy Sources, Systems and Policy Cluster. Her research examines air pollution chemistry and transport at regional and global scales, especially the mechanisms underlying transport across international borders. She employs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Community Multi-Scale Air Quality Model to assess regional air pollution in East Asia and the Great Lakes Region of North America, and she uses the Model of Ozone and Related Tracers to analyze pollution on a global scale. Her work has been supported by grants from NASA, the EPA, the National Institute of Health, and the National Science Foundation.
Innovation and Technology Development
Jing Li
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University
Professor Li’s work is primarily in the areas of solid-state inorganic and inorganic-organic hybrid materials that possess interesting and useful properties for clean energy applications. She has published more than 220 scientific papers and has received a number of awards, including the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Solid State Chemistry and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Crystal Growth and Design.
Advancements for the Developing World
Laura Stachel
Founder, WE CARE Solar
Dr. Stachel is the Medical Director of WE CARE Solar, which helps reduce maternal mortality in developing regions by providing health workers with reliable lighting, mobile communication, and blood bank refrigeration using solar electricity.
Dr. Stachel is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and the Associate Director of Emergency Obstetric Research in West Africa for the University of California, Berkeley Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability. She is also a co-investigator in an upcoming $1.9 million “Saving Lives at Birth” study on the impact of solar interventions on Ugandan maternal health.
Policy and Advocacy
Margaret Downey
Assistant County Administrator, Barnstable County, Massachusetts
Ms. Downey is the Administrator for the Cape Light Compact, the first municipal aggregator in Massachusetts. Ms. Downey manages and directs the Cape Light Compact’s electric power supply aggregation program and energy efficiency programs. She also represents the Cape Light Compact in its sister organization, the Cape & Vineyard Electric Cooperative, which is presently working on installing up to 40 MW of distributed renewable energy projects.
Ms. Downey has been working on energy-related issues for more than 17 years.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Mildred Dresselhaus
Institute Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics,MIT
Mildred Dresselhaus is an Institute Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics at MIT. Professor Dresselhaus has served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Treasurer of the US National Academy of Sciences, President of the American Physical Society and is currently Chair of the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics. She is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, as well as of the Engineering Sciences Section of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the IEEE, the Materials Research Society, the Society of Women Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Carbon Society. She has received numerous awards, including the US National Medal of Science and 23 honorary doctorates worldwide. She served as the Director of the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy in 2000–2001. She is the co-author of four books on carbon science. Her research interests are in electronic materials, particularly in nanoscience and nanotechnology, with special regard to carbon related materials, novel forms of carbon, including fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, porous carbons, activated carbons and carbon aerogels, as well as other nanostructures, such as bismuth nanowires and the use of nanostructures in low dimensional thermoelectricity. She headed a national Department of Energy Study on "Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy," including hydrogen production, storage, and use. She recently cochaired a National Academy of Sciences Decadal Study on "Condensed Matter Materials Physics, CMMP2007"
Professor Mildred Dresselhaus is a native of the Bronx, New York City, where she attended the New York City public schools through junior high school, completing her high school education at Hunter College High School in New York City. She began her higher education at Hunter College in New York City and received a Fulbright Fellowship to attend the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University (1951-52). Professor Dresselhaus received her master's degree at Radcliffe College (1953) and her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago (1958).
Professor Dresselhaus began her MIT career at the Lincoln Laboratory. During that time she switched from research on superconductivity to magneto-optics, and carried out a series of experiments which led to a fundamental understanding of the electronic structure of semi-metals, especially graphite.
A leader in promoting opportunities for women in science and engineering, Professor Dresselhaus received a Carnegie Foundation grant in 1973 to encourage women's study of traditionally male dominated fields, such as physics. In 1973, she was appointed to The Abby Rockefeller Mauze chair, an Institute-wide chair, endowed in support of the scholarship of women in science and engineering.
Professor Dresselhaus has greatly enjoyed her career in science. On her experience working with MIT students, she says, "I like to be challenged. I welcome the hard questions and having to come up with good explanations on the spot. That's an experience I really enjoy."