Celebration of Women in Computing

Katherine Rasley , Minnesota Power Moderator

Katherine Rasley is an Electrical Engineer who primarily designs transmission substations for Minnesota Power. She created and facilitates the Women of ALLETE employee resource group. A brand ambassador and VoLT program graduate of IEEE, she is the current Chair of the IEEE Arrowhead Section, as well as its Member Development Chair, Women in Engineering founder and Chair, and past-Treasurer. A prolific volunteer she has received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award and was a Don Shippar Community Leadership Award finalist. Recently, Katherine enjoyed a visit to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for the hearing on Minnesota Power's Integrated Resource Plan, which she was the co-lead and technical advisor. She keeps herself grounded on the trails of Northeastern Minnesota, loves libraries, podcasts, and exploring new places.

Micheline Bayiha, Minnesota Power

Micheline Bayiha joined Minnesota Power (MP) in 2006 where she is currently working as Senior Cost & Pricing Analyst. Prior to joining MP, she held various positions as Deputy Director of Finance and Accounting, HR Director, Budget Analyst, Office Manager, Project Accountant with multiple companies such as, Company Press and Publishing, Microsoft, United Agency for International Development (USAID) in Africa and Europe. She holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics from the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon. She is the founder of BUILD People Worldwide (“BUILD”) https://www.buildpeopleworldwide.org/ , Chair of the Credit Committee of Minnesota Power Employee Credit Union, a board member of Goodwill Industries Duluth, Program Director for SPIN Worldwide Inc. (SPIN”); she has also served as board member of Cameroon Healthcare Development Project, (CHDP), Global Health Administrative Partners (GHAP), and Global Health Ministries. These organizations provide assistance to various countries in Africa. She and her husband Eugene have six adult children including an adopted one and five grandchildren.

Araina Boyd, Barr Engineering

Process Engineer currently working at Barr Engineering with recent experience at North Shore Mining

Hui Huang, Allete

Certified Public Accountant and a tax analyst at Allete/Minnesota Power. She previously worked at RSM as a tax supervisor and Deloitte as tax staff. MS Huang received her Master's degree in general accounting at City University of New York-Baruch College. She enjoys her career as a tax specialist and adviser.

Rhiannon Klein, Lakehead Constructors

Grew up in Culver, MN and currently live in Duluth, MN. Attended Iron Range Engineering and received a B.S. in Integrated Engineering with a Mechanical Engineering Emphasis in the Fall of 2017. Started working for Lakehead Constructors, Inc in July of 2018 as a Project Engineer.

Sarah Mayne, Sensus

Business professional turned emerging-and-disruptive-technology-nerd. As a driver of change, She is passionate about bringing new technology to the forefront and continuing to drive the evolution of the energy and water landscapes.

As a Program Manager with Sensus, a Xylem Inc. company, she is responsible for implementing large scale SmartGrid and SmartWater projects with utilities and municipalities around the country. She received her Bachelors in Business from the University of Wisconsin Platteville and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. Sarah is also a certified PMP with the highly regarded Project Management Institute.

When she isn’t traveling the country with her work, you’ll find Sarah spending time with her family and working on her home.

Angela Sharp, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, UMD

Senior Instructor that has been teaching for the past 19 years. Her research interests are in environmental modeling. Her most recent work has focused on modeling Chronic Wasting Disease in cervids using coupled differential equation models. She also serves as the advisor for the Women in Engineering and Science student group

Dr. Andy Poe , Northern Michigan University, Moderator

He earned a B.A. from Cornell University, double majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science. He earned two M.S. degrees from University of Michigan, one in Mathematics, one in Computer Science and Engineering, and a Ph.D. from University of Michigan, in Computer Science and Engineering. He has been a member of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department of Northern Michigan University since 1999, where he holds the rank of Professor. Dr. Poe has focused his professional interests primarily on academic competition, founding the NMU Invitational Programming Contest, the Upper Peninsula High School Math Challenge and presently serves as Director of the Michigan Mathematics Prize Competition for high school students. He also works with McNair Scholars, to provide preparation and advice for graduate school to students from underrepresented demographics and offers GRE Prep classes as part of this. His research interests focus primarily on parallel algorithms.

Dale Dowling, UMD Computer Science Graduate Student, UMD

2nd-Year Graduate Student and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Computer Science at UMD. Currently researching the use of electroencephalography, as well as hybrid-EEG-EMG systems, for the classification of hand gestures.

Dr. Alexis Elder, Department of Philosophy, UMD

Her research focuses on interpersonal relationships and emerging technologies, and she draws on historical theories of wellbeing, from China to Greece, to make sense of modern ethical concerns. Her first book, Friendship, Robots, and Social Media: False Friends and Second Selves, was published last year by Routledge. She writes on topics from moral issues in building robots for autism spectrum disorder therapies, to an ethical framework for developing chatbots of the dead. She has published in a variety of journals, including Ethics & Information Technology, ACM SIGCAS, and the Journal of Applied Philosophy, and is active in UMD's Women In Computing group.

Dr. Catherine McCarty, Associate Dean for Medical School, UMD

Associate Dean for Research in the Medical School, Duluth campus. She fulfilled her language requirement at the University of Pittsburgh for her PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics through demonstration of proficiency in computer programming language, specifically for statistical analyses. She teaches medical ethics, epidemiology and biostatistics to first and second year medical students.

Dr. Viann Nguyen-Feng, Department of Psychology, UMD

Viann, Ph.D., MPH is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at UMD. She heads the Mind-Body Trauma Care Lab, which aims to increase access to holistic, trauma-informed mental healthcare by leveraging technological platforms and by bringing such interventions directly to the community. Dr. Nguyen-Feng also serves on the American Psychological Association--Society for the Psychology of Women's Extended Executive Committee, in which she is the Website Coordinator and Co-Chair for the Committee on Technology. Check out https://z.umn.edu/MindBodyTraumaCare for more information.

Dr. Ted Pedersen, Computer Science Faculty, UMD

Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. His research interests are in Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics and focus on identifying the meaning of words and phrases in written text. His most recent work is on automatically identifying hate speech, with a particular focus on Islamophobia. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, and his work has also been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).