Oct 2-4, 2023
Los Altos High School
Pauline Bennett
Associate Director/Chief Engineer
Raytheon
You Are First of All Required to Thrive
Period:
3
October 3, 2023 at 6:05:00 PM
Room:
Eagle Theater
Science, Technology, Engineering
I specialize in Requirements Management for complicated Signals Processing systems for various US Government Agencies. What I've learned from this is that simpler requirements yield more creative designs. I've thought long and hard about what the most important requirement for a complicated space borne system is, and the fact is first, you are required to survive and thrive in the enivronment in which you find yourself placed. I will draw lesson to describe my career and how high school students can adapt these principles to their future courses of study.
Meet the Speaker:
Pauline Bennett is a national asset in systems engineering and radar design with degrees from MIT & Cornell. She is a specialist in the design of space-based radar and communications systems with over three decades of continuous service to the nation’s warfighter and intelligence communities. Her expertise spans the development of advanced data-adaptive radar signal processing algorithms, beam-forming, wireless communications, integration and test planning as well as digital hardware design, requirements management and architectural modeling of complex systems. She has been recognized as a Black Engineer of the Year, a Woman of Color in STEM, a Presidential Scholar and as a National Science Foundation Fellow. She has lectured at UCLA, Stanford, Cornell and served as an adjunct professor at California State University at Northridge teaching an advanced course in radar signal processing. While at Boeing Satellite Systems, she served as a technical lead of a team that octupled their external funding for commercial R&D and she holds the patent for a novel commercial satellite architectures that has served as the blueprint for two decades of satellite designs at Boeing Corporation. Her pioneering work in digital engineering has been credited with helping the government avoid a billion dollar cost overrun on the Global Positioning Satellite Systems and has been adopted by the Department of Defense as a needed best practice in Sysems Engineering. As a consultant, her client list has included the Booz Allen Hamilton Chief Technology Officer, Deputy Directors of DARPA, and the Chief Systems of Systems Engineering for the United States Space Force.Engineer. As a volunteer for the Western Los Angeles County Council of the Boy Scouts of America she served as District Activities Chairperson and authored a nationally distributed revision to the training materials for den leaders. She sings with the Angeles Chorale and the Cathedral Choir of Our Lady of the Angels, has performed at Disney Hall and recorded three commercial albums for Immediate Music with those groups.