Laura J Bottomley

Dr. Laura Bottomley is the founding Director of the Engineering Education Program at North Carolina State University. She is also an Associate Teaching Professor in the Colleges of Engineering and Education. She has taught every grade K through graduate school reaching close to 200,000 students. She has received awards from the White House twice with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics, Science and Engineering Mentoring program, once individually and once as a part of the Women and Minority Engineering Programs at NC State. Dr. Bottomley has served in various roles in her professional societies, IEEE and ASEE, for more than thirty years. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the IEEE Education Society. She served on the committee for the Year of Impact on Racial Equity and on the Diversity Committee for ASEE. Dr. Bottomley is a Fellow of both ASEE and IEEE. Bottomley is a Fellow of the American Society of Engineering Educators and a Fellow of IEEE. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1984 and 1985, respectively, and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from NC State in 1992. She previously worked at Texas Instruments on the GPS system, at AT&T Bell Labs on ISDN standards and at Duke University teaching classes and directing a lab in the electrical engineering department. She has consulted with NASA, Lockheed Martin, Ericsson, IBM, and others. Bottomley served as Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Education and Editor, Special issue on diversity from 2014-2019. She created a webinar for the IEEE Educational Activities Board (“A Train the Trainer Module for Pre-University Engineering Outreach Programs). She served as the lead author for the tutorial “The Role of Standards in Electrical Power Systems,” through the IEEE Educational Activities Board and IEEE Standards Association. She represented IEEE on a National Academy of Engineering Committee: Engineering Equity Extension Service, recruitment of women into engineering, from 2007-2008. She also served as a keynote speaker for the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, September 2019. She was named an IEEE Fellow, in 2015, for leadership in increasing student interest in STEM education, and she received the IEEE EAB Meritorious Achievement Award in Informal Education in 2009. Bottomley has worked in the field of engineering education for more than 30 years. She is among the pioneers in the field of K-12 engineering outreach, and among the first to apply engineering research approaches to engineering education in the K-20 continuum. She started the Engineering Outreach program at both Duke and NC State Universities, called The Engineering Place at NC State, for which work she was recognized by a Presidential Award for Excellence (PAESMEM). Bottomley also founded the Women in Engineering program, and helped bring the percentage of women engineering students from 14% to 33.4% in 2023. She founded the Engineering Education academic program at NC State, which will offer MS and PhD degrees, as well as a certificate in engineering education with a focus on integrative education for all students, and a particular focus on issues associated with research to practice. Dr. Bottomley has received numerous awards for her work, including being selected as a Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, Baylor University, 2022 Semi-finalist and named ASEE Sharon Keillor Award winner in 2023. She has also starred in a Superbowl commercial and the NC STEM Explorers television program.