Tahira Reid Smith, associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, has been named an “emerging leader” by the Society of Women Engineers.

Tahira Reid Smith, associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering

Smith will receive the Emerging Leader Award at SWE’s annual conference, the world’s largest conference and career fair for female engineers and technologists, on Oct. 20-22 in Houston. The award honors a woman who has been actively engaged in the fields of engineering or engineering technology and has demonstrated outstanding leadership skills, resulting in significant accomplishments. The recipient must have at least 10 years of cumulative engineering experience.

“I am honored that SWE recognized the impact of my thinking, work and contributions,” said Reid Smith, who joined the ME faculty in 2012. “A lot of what I do is considered atypical for a mechanical engineer, so I sincerely appreciate SWE for recognizing my efforts to forge new paths in mechanical engineering and impact future engineers."

As the director of the Research in Engineering and Interdisciplinary Design (REID) Laboratory, Smith’s research interests include quantifying and integrating human-centered considerations in the design process and human-machine systems. Her research program has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Ford Motor Company and more. She has also campaigned for inclusion in academic and research settings; she recently co-authored a paper about inclusion in human-machine interactions, and served as a Visiting NASA Scholar in 2020.