Mai Le receives CoE Distinguished Leadership Award

Mai Le, a doctoral student in the Electrical Engineering:Systems program, received a 2014 College of Engineering Distinguished Leadership Award for her outstanding leadership and service to the College and community.

Mai has served as Community Service Co-chair of the Graduate Society of Women Engineers since arriving at Michigan in 2011. An area of special concern for Mai is the need to mentor younger under-represented groups in STEM fields, and convey the fact that engineering is a viable career for them. She arranges for the group to host hands-on activities with elementary schools and girl scout troops, and to reach out to undergraduate students to let them know that graduate school is a cool option.

One of her favorite personal outreach activities is her collaboration with 826michigan. 826michigan is a  nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Mai helped design a technical writing workshop in which the kids built paper airplanes and then asked them to write detailed instructions on how they did it.

She is also an organizing member of EECS Graduate Women, a new group that she’s still trying to foster, with hopes of bringing together all of the women in the department.

Mai Le received her bachelor’s degree at Stanford University in 2011. She is currently working with Prof. Jeff Fessler, conducting research in magnetic resonance image (MRI) reconstruction. For Mai, whenever she is not working on her research, she is involved in outreach.