International Women in Engineering Day

June 23 marks International Women in Engineering Day (INWED). The Women's Engineering Society (WES) initially launched INWED on June 23, 1919, as a national initiative and has since achieved a global reach and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) patronage.

CU Engineering joins WES, current and aspiring women engineers, and organizations working to ensure equality for women in engineering, in commemorating INWED 2023.

This year’s INWED theme is “Make Safety Seen.” Inspired by the women before them, more women have entered engineering disciplines, building representation in STEM roles. Individuals from all walks of life bring different perspectives and experiences of how to make safety seen in engineering fields through research and advocacy.

We celebrate women in engineering who are doing amazing work in safety and security, making working environments safer, advancing research and technology to make the world a safe place for all, and protecting their colleagues, peers, and wider society. The women of yesterday and today can inspire the women of tomorrow.

#MakeSafetySeen #INWED23 #womenengineers #womeninstem #womeninengineering

Christine Chang
Casey Feisler
Danna Gurari

Pioneering Resilient Infrastructure

Shideh Dashti

Making Safety Seen

CSRA Academic Team
The Construction Safety Research Alliance (CSRA) vision is to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities in the construction industry through transformative research and defendable science. The CSRA is a community of industry leaders and academic experts who collaborate to create and share new safety knowledge. They execute scientific research focused on the prevention of serious injuries and fatalities.

Meet the CSRA Research Assistants who are focused on making safety seen.

Jazmin Lopez

  • Bachelor's in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa

Jazmin worked for HNTB Corporation as a field inspector for the $130-million-dollar Midway Airport Passenger Security Checkpoint Expansion Project in Chicago, Illinois. In this role, she gained experience monitoring compliance with specifications, drawing plans, and other contract provisions, including state, federal, and local regulations. This led to her passion for construction. During Spring 2020, she joined the Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Jazmin's research project focuses on testing the effectiveness and measuring the value proposition of using virtual reality for training on hazard recognition and risk estimation.

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Sreeja Thallapureddy

  • Master's in Civil Engineering, Western Michigan University

Sreeja worked with Dr. Siddharth Bhandari studying the psychological factors that influence safety performance using multimedia safety training. Her current research with the CSRA furthers her work in psychology, collaborating with the Incident Investigation and Learning Team to explore and enhance the quality of the information collected during the process. Under the guidance of Dr. Fred Sherratt, Sreeja delivered a unique experiment focusing on incident investigation interviews, developing findings able to enhance the information collection process through the identification and mitigation of bias within the process. She is currently in the final stages of her PhD, with the goal of graduation in 2023.

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Roya Raeisinafchi

  • Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology
  • Master’s in Construction Engineering and Management, University of Tehran

Roya developed a keen interest in the safety aspects of the construction industry and concentrated her research on the critical role of site supervision systems in enhancing the safety performance of construction projects. In her role at CSRA, she is deeply involved with the “Science of Safety Training” project. This project seeks to explore which safety training delivery methods in the construction industry are the most effective for optimizing knowledge acquisition and retention. Additionally, the project explores the potential differences in learning and retention rates across diverse demographic groups.

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#INWED23 Social Media Spotlight

Megan Conard
Megan Conard won the prestigious Colorado Engineering Council Silver Medal Award. She has embodied the highest rigors of academic excellence as a student and was a stellar undergraduate in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. 

“I didn't want to go somewhere where people are pushing each other down to get to the top. I wanted something where people are working together to get to the top.”

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