Join the Center for Campus Involvement (CCI), and The Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs (MESA) Social Connectivity & Community Engagement for a free virtual screening of "HIDDEN FIGURES" and dialogue on Activism, Advocacy and Allyship. Screening access is on 3/15/21 from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. and 3/16/21 from 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. A zoom discussion will conclude the screening access time on 3/16/21 at 5:30 p.m. A zoom link for the discussion and film access link will be sent after registration in a separate email. Access only available for U-M students, staff, and faculty.

DISCUSSION:
College of Engineering, MESA, and CCI will host a panel afterwards with influential faculty or alumni who have helped pave a path for women and other gender minorities in STEAM fields, moderated by U-M students. To register for the discussion please use the link within this listing. Panelists include Dr. Aeriel Murphy-Leonard, Professor Rada Mihalcea, Lydia Lavigne and moderated by Catherine Philpott, U-M student.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Lydia Lavigne’s broad background and experience spans across a variety of industries and projects ranging from large-scale U.S. military system development projects to intelligence analysis and space systems acquisition. Her work in project and program management, technical development and process modeling also includes training and consulting. Her work often integrates complex technical tasks involving multiple technical disciplines including product design, development, manufacturing, and technical analysis.

Lydia currently works for Ball Aerospace in its National Defense business unit as an Advanced Systems Manager, where she develops strategies for pursuing business opportunities in technologies for national defense, including space systems technologies, cyber physical systems, space protection, data analysis, and other adjacent technologies. Capture activities include analyzing customer roadmaps, trade study developments, writing white papers, proposals, and coordinating with both internal and external stakeholders.

Prior to her current role, Lydia worked in several other positions including Ball’s Systems Engineering Solutions group, where she was a program manager responsible for managing cost, schedule, and technical performance on several projects and programs. Other positions include work as a management consultant and in space systems acquisition for the US Government.

Lydia has a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan and an MBA from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). Lydia currently resides in Boulder, Colorado.

Dr. Aeriel D.M. Leonard is an Assistant Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at The Ohio State University. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the University of Alabama in 2012. After completing her Bachelor’s degree, Dr. Leonard worked in the Corrosion Research Group at Alstom Inc. for a year. In 2013, she began her PhD journey at the University of Michigan in Materials Science and Engineering where she earned her PhD in 2018. Dr. Leonard’s PhD work investigated real-time microstructural and deformation evolution in magnesium alloys using advanced characterization techniques such high energy diffraction microscopy and electron back scatter diffraction. During her time at Michigan she led and worked on many teams aimed at increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in engineering including developing and implementing a leadership camp for female engineering students in Monrovia, Liberia. Dr. Leonard was awarded an NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC where she worked for two years. During this time, she used advanced characterization techniques such as x-ray computed tomography and high energy diffraction microscopy to understand damage and texture evolution during in-situ loading in additive manufactured materials. She also runs a lifestyle blog titled AerielViews aimed at young graduate and professional students.

Rada Mihalcea is the Janice M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan and the Director of the Michigan Artificial Intelligence Lab. Her research interests are in computational linguistics, with a focus on lexical semantics, multilingual natural language processing, and computational social sciences. She serves or has served on the editorial boards of the Journals of Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluations, Natural Language Engineering, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, and Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. She was a program co-chair for EMNLP 2009 and ACL 2011, and a general chair for NAACL 2015 and *SEM 2019. She currently serves as ACL President. She is the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers awarded by President Obama (2009), an ACM Fellow (2019) and a AAAI Fellow (2021). In 2013, she was made an honorary citizen of her hometown of Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Catherine Philpott (student moderator) is the President of Women in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Michigan. She is a senior studying aerospace engineering and minoring in computer science. Catherine is also the 2021 recipient of the Arlen R. Hellward award from the University of Michigan for her valuable contributions to the College of Engineering. Catherine has interned at Analytical Graphics, Inc and a private spaceflight company.

ABOUT THE FILM SERIES:

“Activism is inherently a creative endeavor. It takes a radical imagination to be an activist, to envision a world that is not there. It takes imagination and that’s not far from art.” - Ava DuVernay

The MESA’s social connectivity and community engagement and CCI hope to generate thought provoking discussion, engagement around advocacy, activism and allyship this semester by presenting a series of films huddled around these topics, areas that we believe require critical and intentional reflection year round. Each film presentation will conclude with a discussion from students, professionals, and artists familiar with the themes presented throughout the series and in the film. Each film and discussion will be available virtually and will take place the third Tuesday each month at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are available through MUTO for each film. (2/16 - Just Mercy, 3/16 - Hidden Figures, 4/20 - One Thousand Journeys: The Arab-Americans).