“Being the first engineer in my family, as well as the first in my family to receive my Ph.D., means a lot to me.”
-Yilda Irizarry-Valle
Congratulations to Dr. Yilda Irizarry-Valle, a Viterbi alumnae who just received the GEM Young Alumnae Leadership Award! The GEM Consortium (Graduate Education for Minorities in STEM) is an alliance of corporations, universities, and research organizations who work together to advance minority representation in STEM fields. Their Young Alumnae Leadership Award is a prestigious honor granted to recipients of GEM Fellowships who have gone on to excel in their field after the completion of their graduate studies. Dr. Irizarry-Valle received her GEM Fellowship in 2007, and then went on to earn her PhD in Electrical Engineering from USC under adviser Alice Parker. Dr. Irizarry-Valle has interned at FermiLab, America’s premier particle physics lab, and is currently working at Northrop Grumman as a Systems Engineer.
