I’m all about social justice and collaboration, connecting my technical skills to purpose and impact. Alongside leading the Women in Engineering and IT program, my focus on inclusion extends into my teaching, including a number of collaborative projects with Engineers Without Borders Australia (especially in Timor-Leste!).
About my work
My work is a happy, eclectic mix of social justice, teaching engineering professional practice, and research in sound processing. I lead the Women in Engineering and IT team and program. I’ve been involved in gender equity activities, especially school outreach, since my PhD student days! My focus on social justice continues in my academic activities in the Faculty of Engineering and IT, with our first-year engineering teaching focusing on design projects in collaboration with Engineers Without Borders. How does sound signal processing research fit in? I love music and programming, and this research field is the winning combination of both!
A memorable win
Every time a student, be it in primary or high school, says something like “I didn’t think I could do this [STEM/engineering/IT activity], but that wasn’t as hard (or boring) as what I thought it would be!”
My background in telecommunications engineering and personal values focused around social justice have led me to what I do today. My days as a PhD student really contributed to shape this: whilst writing algorithms for 3D sound processing and publishing papers, I started voluntarily organising gender equity activities, especially school outreach, and discovered social justice more broadly as an Oxfam Australia volunteer. With UTS offering an opportunity to align my academic world with my values, despite the good food and coffee in Melbourne, I happily moved in Sydney in 2017 to make gender equity a focus of what I do. And I’m still a volunteer, contributing to the Tech Girls Movement Foundation, Engineers Without Borders Australia, and Feto Enginhera (Women in Engineering) in Timor-Leste.
Eva Cheng working with primary students as part of Women in Engineering and IT's outreach programs.
Website
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evacheng/