Technology

Google Embeds Engineers as Professors

Published

10 years ago

May 4, 2015

Google software engineer and Google In Residence Sabrina Williams talks with students during a Google Student Development class on Impostor Syndrome at Howard University in Washington, Tuesday, April 14, 2015.(AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Martha Mendoza, ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Howard University freshman Alanna Walton knew something was different about the professor teaching her introduction to computer science course.

First, there was her name: Professor Sabrina. She was an African American woman, kept office hours until 2 a.m. if that’s what it took to see everyone, and had an additional title: Google In Residence.

“It was an awesome class,” said Alanna who has already chosen her major at the Washington D.C.-based university: computer science.

In ongoing efforts to diversify Silicon Valley’s tech sector, Google is embedding engineers at a handful of Historically Black Colleges and Universities where they teach, mentor and advise on curriculum.

Today 35 percent of African Americans receiving computer science degrees come from those schools, but they don’t make their way to Silicon Valley’s top tech firms. Google is typical — about 1 percent of its technical staffers are black.

Last year a push by civil rights advocate Jesse Jackson prompted several dozen tech firms to release workforce diversity data which showed under-representation of African Americans, Latinos and women in the field.

In response, businesses, universities and community leaders have launched initiatives aimed at diversifying their ranks, both ethnically and by gender. The Anita Borg Institute and the National Center for Women and Information Technology have partnered with many companies to support female engineers.

Facebook offers “Facebook University,” an internship for low income minority college freshmen interested in computer science. Intel has committed $300 million over the next five years toward diversifying its workforce, while Apple has a $50 million partnership with nonprofits to support women and minority computer science majors.

Google decided to go to the source, sending a handful of software engineers to teach at Howard, Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, Fisk University in Nashville, and Spelman and Morehouse colleges in Atlanta.

They taught introductory courses, but they also trained students on everything from how to send a professional email to how to make it through a software engineering job interview, which can involve a lot of time solving coding questions at a white board.

This summer, 30 of those students will be Google interns. And Howard University graduating senior Christopher Hocutt, 21, whose friends jokingly call him Mr. Google, will be starting at the company full-time.

Hocutt said the Google In Residence professors convinced him to apply.

“What they discovered was a lot of people weren’t even applying to Google because we didn’t believe we were skilled enough to do it,” he said. “Once we realized we have the skills, we just needed mentorship to make our resume look good, get through the interview, have confidence to try.”

Google software engineer Sabrina Williams, who took a semester away from her Mountain View campus this year to mentor and teach at Howard, is thrilled to see her student becoming a colleague.

“I’m inspired,” she said. “Change is slow, this is going to take time, but I think what’s interesting about this program is that it’s a different way of attacking the problem of lack of diversity in tech.”

Fifteen years ago, Williams was the only female African American computer science major at Stanford University. “I kind of felt awkward so I kind of hid a lot,” she said. “It was very difficult.”

She said that while “teaching is hard” and the hours at Howard were grueling, she welcomed the opportunity to offer students an experience different from her own. This included taking female computer scientists aside early in the semester, telling them she was available for any questions, and encouraging them to support each other.

Legrand Burge, who chairs Howard University’s computer science department, welcomes the temporary addition of Google engineers to his faculty.

“They’re not academics but they have domain expertise that students could definitely learn a lot from,” he said. “The word got out and it actually got a lot of students interested in computer science who didn’t initially plan to study it.”

Indeed, class sizes have doubled in intro courses. Williams had 70 students in one class; about 250 were taught so far this year by Google engineers at all five schools.

In the 1970s and 80s a similar program partnered the university with AT&T, Bell and Hewlett Packard, Burge said. This time, he said, Google is bringing a disruptive, Silicon Valley mentality to their campus.

“The issue with the East Coast and West Coast ecosystem, is that in the West there’s a fail fast, fail often mentality,” Burge said. “And there’s a disconnect between academia, which does not have that try things out, dare to experiment, fail and learn about why you failed, come back and do better, culture.”

___

Follow Martha Mendoza @mendozamarthaap.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Advanced Conductors Provide Path for Grid Expansion

Utility companies in the United States could double electric transmission capacity by 2035 by replacing existing transmission lines with those made from advanced materials, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Published

6 days ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy UC Berkeley News.

By Matthew Burciaga

UC Berkeley News

Led by Duncan Callaway, professor and chair of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), and Amol Phadke, an affiliate and senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy, the first-of-its-kind study details a faster and more cost-effective way to expand the grid and connect the more than 1,200 gigawatts of renewable energy projects awaiting approval. The analysis was first published last December as a working paper by the Energy Institute at Haas and has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Heatmap News, and other news outlets.

“Expanding transmission capacity is critical to decarbonization, and we sought to study ways to build it faster and cheaper,” said Callaway.

It currently takes 10 to 15 years to build a new power line and the U.S. is building transmission lines at a lower rate than it was in the past decade. Without sufficient capacity, renewable energy projects often sit in limbo for years as transmission operators study what upgrades—if any—are needed to accommodate the increased loads.

The authors modeled various scenarios to determine if replacing existing transmission conductors with those made with advanced composite-core materials—a process known as reconductoring—could provide a pathway to faster grid expansion.

Several reconductoring projects have been initiated in Belgium and the Netherlands, and utility companies in the U.S. have used the material to string transmission lines across wide spans like river crossings. That technology, however, has not made its way to the majority of overhead power lines that feed residential and commercial customers.

“As we learned more about the technology, we realized that no one had done the detailed modeling needed to understand the technology’s potential for large-scale transmission capacity increases,” said Phadke.

Based on the authors’ projections, it is cheaper—and quicker—for utility companies to replace the 53,000 existing transmission lines with advanced composite-core materials than it is to build entirely new transmission lines.

They assert that doing so would reduce wholesale electricity costs by 3% to 4% on average—translating to $85 billion in system cost savings by 2035 and $180 billion by 2050.

“The level of interest we’ve received from federal and state agencies, transmission companies and utilities is extremely encouraging, and since our initial report, the Department of Energy has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to reconductoring projects,” said co-author Emilia Chojkiewicz, a PhD student in ERG and an affiliate of the Goldman School of Public Policy. “We are looking forward to learning about these projects as they unfold.”

Additional co-authors include Nikit Abhyankar and Umed Paliwal, affiliates at the Goldman School of Public Policy; and Casey Baker and Ric O’Connell of GridLab, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive technical grid expertise to policy makers and advocates.

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Black History

A Life of Inventions: Engineer and Physicist George Alcorn

George Edward Alcorn Jr. was born on March 22, 1940, in Indianapolis. Growing up in a family that valued education, Alcorn developed an early love for science and mathematics. He excelled in school, and attended Occidental College in California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1962. He received a master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967 at Howard University.

Published

1 week ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Portrait of George Edward Alcorn Jr. Debbie McCallum, Public domain.

By Tamara Shiloh

George Edward Alcorn Jr. was born on March 22, 1940, in Indianapolis.

Growing up in a family that valued education, Alcorn developed an early love for science and mathematics. He excelled in school, and attended Occidental College in California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1962. He received a master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967 at Howard University.

Alcorn began his career in developing scientific technology in private industries, starting a career as a physicist for IBM. His career took off when he joined several prestigious companies and research institutions, such as the Aerospace Corporation, where he developed important technologies for spacecraft. In 1978, he accepted a position at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he worked for the remainder of his career. There, he developed technologies for space stations and private institutions across the nation, becoming a key figure in the field of physics and space exploration.

Alcorn is well known for his groundbreaking work on X-ray spectrometers. An X-ray spectrometer is a device used to identify different elements in materials by analyzing the X-ray wavelengths they emit. His improvements allowed the instrument to detect X-rays with greater accuracy and efficiency. This invention has been critical for NASA’s space missions, aiding in the analysis of planetary atmospheres and surfaces, including Mars and other planets in our solar system.

He also contributed to the development of plasma etching, a process used in manufacturing microchips for computers and electronics. His work in this area advanced semiconductor technology, which powers everything from smartphones to satellites.

Another accomplishment was the development of new technologies used in the Freedom space station in partnership with space agencies in Japan, Canada and Europe, though their projects never made it to space.

Throughout his career, Alcorn received several awards and honors, including NASA’s Inventor of the Year Award in 1984. In 2010, he received the highest honor from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2015, Alcorn was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention of the imaging X-ray spectrometer.

In addition to his work in the lab, Alcorn dedicated much of his time to teaching and mentoring young scientists. As one of the few African American scientists working in advanced fields like physics and space exploration, he has been an inspiration to young people, especially those from underrepresented groups in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). He taught at Howard University and worked to encourage more African Americans to pursue careers in science and engineering.

George is quoted as stating, “The big thing about being in science and engineering is that if you have a good, interesting project going, work is not coming to work, it’s coming to an adventure.”

George Edward Alcorn passed away June 19, 2024.

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Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌

Gov. Newsom Touts California Economic Success

In a 20-minute interview on Oct. 10, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California’s economy is in great shape due to achievements in certain areas. The Governor was speaking at the 2024 California Economic Summit event hosted by California Forward in Sacramento. It was attended by more than 100 leaders from industry, community, and the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

Published

2 weeks ago

October 21, 2024

Oakland Post

Gov. Gavin Newsom. File photo.

By Antonio Ray Harvey

In a 20-minute interview on Oct. 10, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California’s economy is in great shape due to achievements in certain areas.

The Governor was speaking at the 2024 California Economic Summit event hosted by California Forward in Sacramento. It was attended by more than 100 leaders from industry, community, and the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

“It is an exciting and dynamic time,” said Newsom. “Thirty-two of the top 50 AI companies are all here in California. We dominate in tourism – record breaking tourism last year.”

“It isn’t by accident that California is an economic powerhouse,” Newsom continued. “Whether it be around education, infrastructure, or immigration, we’re following a formula for success.”

In Newsom’s overview of the state’s economy, he didn’t include why two companies decided to leave for the state of Texas. SpaceX and Chevron announced their departures over the summer.

Billionaire Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of his companies X and SpaceX from San Francisco to Texas. After 140 years of doing business in California, Chevron is heading to the southwestern state as well.

Chevron employs 2,000 workers in San Ramon. It operates crude oil fields, technical facilities, two refineries, and services more than 1,800 retail stations in California.

“There will be minimal immediate relocation impacts to other employees currently based in San Ramon. The company expects all corporate functions to migrate to Houston over the next five years. Positions in support of the company’s California operations will remain in San Ramon,” Chevron shared in an Aug. 2 press release.