Dr. Judy Amanor-Boadu, a former student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, was awarded the 2022 Distinguished New Engineer Award and the Patent Recognition Award from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
The Distinguished New Engineer Award is a prestigious honor given to an SWE member who has demonstrated outstanding technical performance and leadership in SWE, engineering organizations and the community.
The award recognizes Amanor-Boadu’s continuing dedication to SWE’s mission to highlight the impact and importance of women in engineering across the globe, to lead by example and to demonstrate that a career in engineering can be a fulfilling, rewarding pursuit for women of any background.
“It is all about paying it forward and helping people,” said Amanor-Boadu. “I went through challenges that I would not want others to go through, so I try as much as possible to be the best mentor I can be and to accelerate people in their career and professional development.”
She also received the Patent Recognition Award for being a SWE member who had been awarded a patent within the last three years. In October 2021, she was awarded a United States patent, US 11,159,036: Systems and methods for flexible power topology for display assembly in an information handling system.
Amanor-Boadu pursued her undergraduate degree in Ghana at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. She later received her master’s and doctoral degrees from Texas A&M. During her time as a graduate student, she was heavily involved in the Women in Engineering (WE) program and was the first graduate student who assisted with its revival.
“I was one of the first graduate assistants hired by Dr. Shawna Fletcher, the director of WE,” she said. “It was the beginning of the program after its hiatus, and our goal was to make it successful. I will say it was one of the best times I had at Texas A&M because I learned so much from the program.”
She credits WE for helping her with professional and personal development. She noted that WE taught her confidence, emotional intelligence, her strengths and how to respond to unconscious bias in her life.
“WE taught me highly valuable skills that I still use today and teach to others,” said Amanor-Boadu. “These are things I would not have known about, but WE gave me the opportunity to gain that knowledge. Dr. Fletcher was a great boss and mentor to me.”
Amanor-Boadu is now a staff analog engineer for Intel Corporation. She is involved in the Women at Intel (WIN) and Intel Network of African Ancestry (NIA) employee resource groups, and mentors recent college graduates that are underrepresented minorities.
Her awards will be presented at the Society of Women Engineers Conference 2022 in October.
“It is a great honor to have been chosen for this award,” she said. “I am thankful to everyone who has been a part of my career so far, and I hope to continue motivating others by paying it forward.”