2021 EngineerGirl Ambassador Anna Hill-Jones interviewed Dr. Lili Deligianni as part of the ambassador program in Spring 2022.
Dr. Hariklia (Lili) Deligianni is an adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
0:09 – My name is Anna Hill-Jones …. Today, I am here with Dr. Deligianni …. I’m super excited to be talking to [you] today. If you’d like to give us a small introduction about what you do, that would be great.
Hi, I’m Lili Deligianni. I’m an engineer, a chemical engineer by training. I have done many things throughout a 35-year-plus career but what I do now is – I lead a start-up. The start-up is called Sense4Me and it’s in the medical field. … We’re trying to measure physiological signals – the physiology of the body and understand those moments of high risk for people who have addiction issues, more specifically, issues with alcohol. So we can measure when the person is about to drink and we provide just-in-time intervention.
1:35 – So when you’re coming into the office, doing this amazing work, what is your day-to-day like? What activities are you consistently doing throughout the day to try and do all this?
Well, when you are part of a start-up, a small company, you really have to do everything. It’s not only doing the technical work but also trying to do measurements with people who have this issue and [trying] to compare with healthy individuals what the differentiation is with the measurements. But also thinking about the business and the business aspects are about ‘who do I have as a team?’ and ‘is the team complete and able to develop the work on their own?’. But also how do I present this small business, how do I make profit? Ultimately, when the product is sold, is there business, is there somebody who wants to buy this product?
2:58 – Why did you specifically want to go into engineering, did you know when you were two-years-old that this was the field for you or was it a spur of the moment thing in college?
There were two aspects in my life that led me to engineering. It was by coincidence and by influence. Let me explain. I have a brother so when we were kids, we would play together. … We had a very nice game called the Little Mechanic and we would build structures with little tools. So we’d build bridges or other structures and I enjoyed that very much for a young age.
The second influence was from my father; he was not an engineer, but my father had to go to war and fight. When he was young, he became a communications engineer, an electrical engineer, basically. He really liked it and he was describing to me how much he liked the field, but he never studied to be an engineer. So these two aspects led me to engineering and because I was motivated by solving or dealing with very difficult and challenging fields, I chose chemical engineering at the time. I really didn’t know what it was, but I later discovered that was my passion.
5:20 – What’s your favorite part of this field, now that you’re in it?
My favorite part, believe it or not, is not the engineering itself, not the technical work, but it’s the impact that engineering has in solving big societal problems. When you see what can be done by solving engineering problems, the world is wide open to you. The impact can be tremendous; from creating new food resources or extending the food resources that we have on the planet, from affecting climate change, from affecting health and wellness, from preventing disease.
6:20 – I wanted to segway a little bit to the Vittorio de Nora Award [of the Electrochemical Society] which you won in 2018, you were the first woman to ever receive this award, which is really cool. I want to congratulate you on that and I want to know, did you ever think you would be in the position to win this award? And what do you think led to this? What, in your career, made you qualified for this award?
Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would ever receive such an award. It’s a great honor and I’m very very grateful.
“The reality is that nobody on this earth walks alone.”
The reality is that nobody on this earth walks alone. Everybody has help and works in teams, especially in science and engineering. It is tremendous to be able to work in teams, the reason I received this award was not only because of my previous contributions.
Let me explain a little bit. There were a lot of contributions that we’d made as a team in the semiconductor industry. When I was at IBM, we worked to change the metal of the computer chip of the interconnect. The metal of the interconnect in the past was made out of aluminum and we made this major change in material to copper. This took a small group of people initially to work on it and later a very large group of people to implement it, develop it, and manufacture it. Nevertheless, I was part of that team and I’m very grateful that I was. Later on I worked on an equally significant problem in renewable energy. We created a group of people that helped a start-up company from Europe develop and scale thin film solar cells. So I think these contributions led to people recognizing that I was worthy of the award and I’m very grateful for that.
9:11 – Now you are a mentor, you worked on organizing Engineers Week, which is a program for K-12 students, why do you do these projects? Why do you think it’s so important for you, personally, to give back to the community in this way?
It’s hugely important, because unfortunately in our society there are biases. I've seen teachers tell girls, ‘you’re not good in math’,’you’re not good in science’. It’s hugely important to get as many people as we can to love science and math. Science and math is the foundation and language for [engineering]. Primary education should give a well-rounded education of everything, I don’t think there should be a focus, but giving everybody the opportunity. When you give young minds opportunities and you open them up to the possibilities, they can conquer the world, they can really do amazing things.
10:40 – I know engineering can be hard, you mentioned it a little bit, there’s a lot of hardships you can face while in this field. When you felt down or defeated, where were you able to go and where did you get support when you needed it?
Professional societies are tremendous support groups. I want to mention the Society of Women engineers, for example, is a great support group. For me, a support group was the Electrochemical Society. This was a place where I grew up, personally and professionally, with other scientists and engineers and a network of people who were outside my workplace. …
I also had mentors; mentors are people that you can tell anything, all your problems, and they can really give you a new perspective, a different perspective. One of my mentors was my academic advisor. Another mentor was a colleague at IBM, he was very very supportive of my work but also, he was a great collaborator. … Even some of the younger colleagues were my mentors because they brought a completely different perspective, the perspective of their generation and how they view the problem at hand.
“When you’re down and you feel that there is a mountain in front of you that you cannot get over. When you see the perspective of another person, when you frame the perspective in a different way, then you can overcome it.”
13:39 – Do you have any more thoughts that you think would be helpful to a girl like me who’s considering going into the engineering field?
Of course it’s possible, you should grab the opportunity and run with it. You will succeed and more. The sky’s the limit.
That’s a great way to end this, it was so great to be able to talk to you today, you’re really an inspiration. Thank you so much for being here.