Mentorship of Future Leaders

Prof. Koushanfar's contributions to outreach, mentorship, and training star engineers are very significant and remain an integral part of her research efforts. In her faculty role, she has graduated an equal number of women and men PhD students (as of 2025). While Prof. Koushanfar is equally proud of all her PhD alumni, she is grateful that a diverse group of students has been able to work, collaborate, and thrive in her lab. Prof. Koushanfar's research group has produced several rising and shining young talents in academia and industry (see her alumni by following the "Lab members" tabs above).As a junior faculty, Prof. Koushanfar founded Rice University Electrical (XOR) Computer Engineering Leaders (Women ExCEL), a group of women graduate students focused on mentorship and changing the climate of the department. Alumni from Women ExCEL have since resumed key positions in academia and industry, at top institutions including UT Austin, Georgia Tech, Stanford, Google DeepMind, and NVIDIA AI. Upon joining UCSD, Prof. Koushanfar co-founded the Women in ECE (WECE) group together with other ECE women faculty in her department. WECE has been organizing various activities, including inviting motivational speakers from industry and academia, hosting informative sessions about career options, and providing mentorship and support to women in the department, as well as reaching out to younger students. 

Under the leadership of its two women founding co-directors, Professors Javidi and Koushanfar, the UCSD MICS Research Center has made a significant contribution to women leadership in the field. With about 50% women faculty, it's noteworthy that MICS is likely the most gender-balanced top engineering research center in the United States, if not worldwide. 

In 2023, Building on their success story, the MICS co-directors initiated the innovative Hypatia Stars Women Fellowship Program. The program's goal is to recognize and advance outstanding women graduate students, placing them in a new three-year hierarchical mentorship program. So far, they have successfully secured funding for the inaugural class of fellows, thanks to a generous donation to the endowment funds from Qualcomm, which was further augmented with a 50% matching contribution from the Chancellor's office. More information about the Hypatia Fellows program can be found on the program page.

In addition, Prof. Koushanfar has been an active member of the diversity committee in the ECE department and at the university level at UCSD. She had the privilege of leading an all-women Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI) team, marking a historic first in the approximately 25-year history of the DoD MURI program. Her mentorship efforts are focused on personal growth and holistic nurturing of star researchers and leaders from all genders and backgrounds.