>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's the Cube covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here at the Orange County Convention Center. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Aysegul Gunduz, she is a professor at the University of Florida-College of Engineering. Thanks so much for joining us. >> No, thank you for having me. >> So, congratulations are in order, because you are a ABIE Award winner, which is awards given out by the Anita Borg Institute, and you have been given the Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award. So, tell us a little about, about your award. >> Well, thank you for asking. We've heard a lot about Grace Hopper and Anita Borg throughout the conference, but Denice Denton, she was actually very close friends with Anita. And she was a leader in her field, her field was development of polymers, and she worked on the first development of RAM. But she was actually the first ever dean of a college of engineering at a major university... >> Rebecca: First ever woman. >> First woman dean, yes, so she became dean at the University of Washington, and then she actually became chancellor at University of California, but just beyond her research she really promoted and lifted the people around her, so she was a big proponent of minority issues. So, she supported females, she supported international students, and she was openly gay, so she really had a big influence on the LGBTQ community, so I just wanted to, you know, just recognize her and say that how honored I am to have my name mentioned alongside hers. This award is given to a junior faculty member that has done significant research and also has had an impact on diversity as well. >> So, let's start talking... >> Denice is a great inspiration. >> Yes! The award given an homage to Denice, so your research is about detecting neurological disorders. So, tell our viewers a little bit more about what you're doing. >> Sure, I'm an electrical engineer by training, who does brain research for a living, so this confuses a lot of people, but I basically tell them that our brains have bioelectric fields that generate biopotential signals that we can record and we're really trying to decipher what these signals are trying to tell us. So, we are really trying to understand and treat neurological disorders as well as psychiatric disorders, so I work with a lot of neurosurgical patient populations that receive electrode implants as part of their therapy, and we are trying to now improve these technologies so that we can record these brain signals and decode them in real time, so that we can adapt things like deep brain stimulation for the current pathology that these patients are having. So, deep brain stimulation, currently, is working like, think of an AC and it's working on fan mode so its current, you know, constantly blowing cold air into the room, even though the room might be just the perfect temperature, so we are basically trying to listen to the brain signals and only deliver electricity when the patient is having a pathology, so this way we are basically turning the AC onto the auto mode, so that once they are actually not having symptoms, unnecessary electrical, it is not delivered into their brains, so pace makers, when they invented were functioning that way, so people realized they could stimulate the heart, and the person would not have a cardiac arrest, but now we know that we can detect the heart pulse very easily, so someone thought about 'OK, so when we don't detect the pulse, heartbeat, let's only stimulate the pace maker then,' so that's what we're trying to adapt to the neuro-technologies. >> And what is the patient response? I mean I imagine that's incredible. So, these are people who suffer from things like Parkinson's disease, Tourette's syndrome, I mean, it's a small patient population that you're working with now, but what are you finding? >> So, first of all, our patients are very gracious to volunteer for our studies, we find that, for instance, in Tourette's syndrome we can actually detect when people are having tics, involuntary tics, that is characteristic of Tourette's syndrome. We find that we can differentiate that from voluntary movements, so we can really deliver the stimulation when they are having these symptoms, so this is a paroxysmal disorder, they really don't need continuous stimulation. So, that's one thing that we're developing. We find that in essential tremor, again, when people aren't having tremor we can detect that and stop the stimulation and only deliver it when necessary. We're working on a symptom called freezing of gaits in Parkinson's disease so people define this as the, having the will to walk, but they feel like their feet are glued to the floor so this can cause a lot of falls, and at that, really, age this can be very, very dangerous. So, we can actually tell from the brain when people are walking and then we turn the stimulation in this particular area only during that time so as to prevent any falls that might happen. >> So, it's really changing their life and how they are coping with this disease. >> Yes, true, and it really makes going to work in the morning (laughs) very, very exciting for us. >> So, another element of the ABIE Award is that you are helping improve diversity in your field and in Denice Denton, in the spirit of Denice Denton, helping young women and minorities rise in engineering. >> Yes, so, I'm going to talk about this in my keynote session tomorrow, but I really just realized that all my confidence throughout engineering school was due to the fact that I actually had a female undergraduate advisor, and once I came to that realization, I joined Association for Academic Women at the University of Florida, which was established in 1974, because these pioneering women fought for equal pay for male and female faculty on campus, and this is still honored today, so I'm very honored to be serving the Association as its president today. All of our membership dues go to dissertation awards for female doctoral students that are, you know, emerging scholars in their fields, and I also approached the National Science Foundation and they supported the funding for me to generate a new emerging STEM award for female students in the STEM fields. So, you know, that is my contribution. >> So, you're passing it on... >> I hope so. >> the help and the mentoring that you received as young faculty member. >> I truly hope so. >> I mean, (stammers) right now we're so focused on the technology companies but on campuses, on the undergraduate and graduate school campuses, how big a problem is this, would you say? >> So, I'm a faculty in biomedical engineering, so, in our field we actually have some of the highest female to male ratios compared to other engineering fields. People attribute this to the fact that females like to contribute to the society, so, they like to work on problems, they like to work on problems that have a societal impact and I think working with, basically, you know, disorders in any branch of medicine, it really fires, fires up female students, but yes, when we go to other departments such as electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, the ratio is really, really small. And it still is a problem and therefore we are really trying to mobilize, you know, all female faculty, just to be present, just the fact that you're there, that you're a successful female in this field... >> Rebecca: The role models. >> Yeah, really makes an impact, you know, I think, the most repeated quote at this meeting is that 'You can't be what you can't see." So, we're really trying to support female faculty. So, we're tying to retain female faculty, so that, you know, the younger generation of females can see that they can and the will do it as well. >> You can't be what you can see, I love that. Those are words to live by. >> Right. >> Yeah. Well, thank you so much Aysegul, this is a pleasure, pleasure meeting you, pleasure having you on the show. >> Thank you so much, pleasure's mine. >> We'll be back with more from Grace Hopper just after this.