Doreen Cohen, an 11th grader at Ulpanat AMIT Anna Teich Haifa, will represent the Future Female Engineers project at an Israeli Embassy conference to be held next month at the United Nations. The Future Female Engineers project, sponsored jointly by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Yedioth Ahronoth and Ynet, was created to address the current severe shortage of engineers in general and female engineers in particular, and to address the need to preserve the international standing of Israel as a high-tech superpower.
One hundred outstanding students from across Israel were selected to participate in Future Female Engineers. This special project gives young women the opportunity to meet with women leaders in high-tech and science, tour the aerospace industry and work on group engineering projects with mentoring from science and technology professionals. Doreen Cohen and her team developed a system to prevent children from being inadvertently left in vehicles. The system is based on RFID technology (Radio Frequency Identification) and is able to identify sensors via radio waves and trigger an alert system in the case of a child being forgotten in a vehicle. The girls were even able to enlist the support of the CEO of Egged Transport, a subsidiary of the Egged Bus Company. The CEO was very impressed by their idea, has become an active partner in promoting the project, and even offered to implement a pilot project in five of the company’s buses.
Out of the 100 Future Female Engineers participants, Doreen and two others were selected to represent the project at a conference held by the Embassy of Israel in the United Nations next month. Doreen completed her 5 units of mathematics in 10th grade (most do so in 12th grade) and is now immersed in her physics and computers studies. “I was always interested in science,” said Doreen, “and participating in the project made me realize that I want to continue studying science and have a career in the technology and science industries. I am happy and proud to be representing the project at the United Nations next month and hope other girls will not hesitate to study science subjects if that is what they are interested in.”
