YOUNG WOMEN’S ENGINEERING SYMPOSIUM 2025
What is YWES?
For the past 12 years, The Janksters, Notre Dame High School’s FIRST Robotics Competition team, has hosted the Young Women’s Engineering Symposium (YWES). This event was created to empower female and non-binary high school students interested in STEM through inviting female engineers from a variety of fields to host speaker sessions and a Q&A panel. This year the engineering fields include electrical, biomedical, software, marine, environmental, and civil. Speakers are invited to present their experiences as women in STEM and provide professional career advice. This year the event will be held on December 6, 2025!
Event Details
December 6, 2025 from 9:00am - 12:45pm at Notre Dame High School, San Jose, CA
Sign Up
Please indicate your interest and sign up for the event here.
Meet Our Speakers
Christine Harper
Biomedical Engineer
Christine Harper is a biomedical engineer who is currently working at Cleancard, a company making an at home test for detecting bladder cancer using urine. She is specifically working on microfluidics and hardware components. She holds a PhD in Biomedical and Medical Engineering from Cornell University, where her research explored how mechanical forces influence bacterial behavior. With experience in research leadership, experimental design, and statistical analysis, she focuses on solving complex challenges at the intersection of biology and engineering to advance healthcare technology.
Elizabeth Lo
Civil Engineer
Elizabeth Lo is a civil engineer and founder of Lo Designs, Inc., a women-owned civil engineering firm. She has worked on major projects like the US 101 Ralston Avenue Bikeway Overcrossing and UC Merced 2020 Campus expansion. Passionate about community impact, she has collaborated with school districts, City Parks Departments, and the National Park Service. She is currently working on the San Francisco International Airport Infrastructure Modernization Plan and residential projects across the Bay Area.
Lizmarie Ortiz
Mechanical Engineer
Lizmarie Ortiz is a mechanical engineer who recieved her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. She has over six years of experience in surgical robotics and currently works at Intuitive Surgical, developing advanced instruments for the da Vinci surgical system. She’s an expert with SolidWorks, Finite Element Analysis, and Six Sigma methods, which she uses to design, test, and improve high quality medical devices.
Melissa Nierle
Software Engineer
Melissa Nierle is a senior software engineer at Apple. Over her almost nine year tenure, she has developed numerous features for iOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS and tvOS. She has presented three times at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Melissa obtained her BS in Computer Science from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Katie Patrick
Environmental Engineer
Katie Patrick is an environmental engineer and an expert in behavior design for sustainability, specializing in applying behavioral psychology, gamification, and feedback loops to drive large-scale climate and environmental action. She has worked with top institutions including the United Nations Environment Programme, NASA JPL, Harvard, Stanford, etc. She has written a book How to Save the World — How to Make Changing the World the Greatest Game We've Ever Played, which was ranked by Forbes as one of the top 5 books in social entrepreneurship and is taught at Harvard and recommended by the UN.
Nina Ault
Electrical Engineer
Nina Ault is an electrical engineer at Silverman & Light with 10 years of experience designing lighting and power systems for buildings. Inspired by her love for math and architecture, Nina studied architectural engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where an internship introduced her to electrical engineering. Since then, she has designed electrical systems for restaurants at the Chase Center, a 40-story high rise residential building in Hawaii, and the lighting of the Bay Bridge to name a few. She is passionate about showing the next generation of girls that engineering is creative, impactful, and full of opportunities.