The Princeton student chapter of the Society of Women in Engineering (SWE) recently held its annual high school colloquium aimed at educating young women about careers in engineering.

"We wanted to show them that you can do a lot of different things with an engineering degree," said SWE President Ilka Netravali '03.

SWE invited two female engineers to speak: Virginia Bonker, a computer science major, who is now a venture capitalist; and Christine Podilchuk, who is a researcher at Bell Labs.

Ms. Bonker is chief executive officer of Bluerock Capital Firm, which helps early-stage entrepreneurs acquire funding and get established in business.

Although she is not programming code anymore, Ms. Bonker's computer science education factors into her work regularly, she said. Her background makes it possible for her to understand and assess the complex inventions and technical services she is being asked to support. It also helps her guide her clients in their business decisions.

"My job is to know the right questions to ask, in order to lead to the right decisions," said Ms. Bonker.

Ms. Bonker said that her computer science education gave her "credibility," which she particularly needed early in her career, when she worked on Wall Street. She said that working environments are better for women now than they were when she was graduating high school.

Dr. Podilchuk used her engineering education to tread a path more in step with traditional engineering graduates. She is a researcher in the Multimedia Signal Processing Lab at Bell Labs, where she studies compression, transmission, face recognition, digital watermarking, and other aspects of video.

Dr. Podilchuk said that although many of her colleagues are male, that has not hindered her work. To make the point that scientists do not have to look a certain way, she showed photos of several famous inventors, including the patent holder '40s film star Heddy Lamaar.

She also said that many opportunities are available for women now, citing Lucent's fellowship for women seeking graduate degrees in the sciences.

Following the keynote speakers was a student panel and a group activity. Members of the student panel described the numerous possibilities that are available for engineering students at Princeton, and representatives from the departments described their course work and why they each chose their particular major. The SEAS undergraduate student population is 30 percent women, almost double the national average (17 percent) of women studying engineering.

Graduate studentXiaoqiangMais the firstelectrical engineering student toreceive a highly competitiveand prestigious Microsoft Fellowship.

He will have the opportunityto be a Microsoft Fellow for thenext two years. Xiaoqiang wasselected based on the quality ofhis proposed thesis research. Hehas been working with ProfessorsHisashi Kobayashiand Stuart Schwartz.

Xiaoqiang's research hasbeen supported, in part, by agrant from Mitsubishi ElectricResearch Labs, in Murray Hill,N.J., as well as grants from theNational Science Foundation,and the New Jersey Center forWireless Telecommunications.Xiaoqiang has been workingon novel algorithms for signalrecovery and channel estimationof orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexed (OFDM)signals, which will be used inthe next generation of wirelesscommunications.

He has already presentedand submitted several conferencepapers with ProfessorsKobayashi and Schwartz and ispreparing an invention disclosurewith researchers from MitsubishiElectric Research Labs.