Lynn Conway, an internationally recognized advocate for transgender rights who led a revolution in microchip design, speaks as part of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Townhall Series.

Lynn Conway’s contributions led to the development of a unified structural methodology that demystified the silicon chip design process and triggered the very-large-scale integration (vlsi) revolution in Silicon Valley in the late 1970s – advances that are credited with making cell phones and laptops possible. But as she describes, credit for these contributions waned over the years before completely disappearing by 2009. 

From Professor Conway’s abstract: "When “others” (such as women and people of color) make innovative contributions in scientific and technical fields, they often “disappear” from later history and their contributions are ascribed elsewhere. This is seldom deliberate—rather, it’s a result of the accumulation of advantages by those who are expected to innovate. This lecture chronicles an example of such a disappearance and introduces the Conway Effect to elucidate the disappearance process."

The event is open to current Cooper Union students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Contact Nori Perez for the zoom link.

Time Magazine named Lynn Conway one of the most influential LGBTQ figures in American Culture in 2014. She was also recognized as one of the “Stonewall 40 trans heroes” by the International Court System, in collaboration with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 2009. A professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she is an IEEE Life Fellow, a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). She has been awarded three honorary doctorates, the IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award, and the IEEE/Royal Society of Edinburgh James Clerk Maxwell Medal.