Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

I'm Tsu-Jae King Lu. I'm a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. I've been on the faculty here since 1996, so that's almost 28 years. I currently also have an administrative leadership position as Dean of the College of Engineering, which includes 7 departments. So not only electrical engineering and computer sciences, but also material science, mechanical engineering, bioengineering, civil and environmental engineering, nuclear engineering, and industrial engineering and operations. 

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Anya Sun 

Wow. That's really impressive. So, do you mind explaining your journey? So, how did you get to where you currently are today? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Sure. So, at a research institution like UC Berkeley, they expect faculty, in general, to have a doctorate degree. So, I earned all of my higher education degrees at Stanford University. I chose to major in electrical engineering as an undergraduate, because I knew that engineering could help people save lives. I had decided early on that I wasn't cut out to be a medical doctor. But I knew that doctors used tools and equipment that were designed by engineers to diagnose and to treat patients. So, that's how I chose electrical engineering. And that was in the 80s, when Silicon Valley was booming. So, there was a lot of excitement around semiconductors. And so that influenced me to take some courses in semiconductor devices and technology. I decided to stay for a fifth year to earn a master's degree, and during that time, I had the chance to serve as a teaching assistant for some classes. I found that I enjoyed that very much, and I also got to meet some PhD students who were really excited about their research. And, you know, one of them is my husband. And he encouraged me to pursue a PhD at Stanford. So, I didn't plan on it, but I stayed on to pursue a PhD. And when I graduated, I knew that I would like the option to become a faculty member someday. So, I went to work at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. It's a place where a lot of inventions were conceived, such as the graphical user interface that we all are accustomed to now, first used in the Xerox Alto computers there, and then the computer mouse was invented there, laser printing was invented there, a lot of things were invented there. They had early prototypes of the iPad and the smartphones many, many years before that concept was successfully commercialized. So, I learned a lot when I was working at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and after a few years, I had the opportunity to come to Berkeley as a faculty member. So, that's how I ended up here, because I really enjoy doing research, but I also enjoy working with bright and motivated students to really help them achieve their full potential and go on and do positive things to change the world. 

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Anya Sun 

That's really cool. So how did you achieve the current leadership position that you have? Like, how did you get from a faculty member to the dean? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Yeah, good question. Well, before I became Dean, I served in some other leadership positions, including as chair of the ESD department. I think, just naturally, you gain more experience in managing different aspects of what it takes to run an organization. So that includes financial, and staff, and just the logistical aspects of managing an organization that you don't have to worry about as much as a faculty member. So, I stepped up to serve as chair of the ECS department, because I wanted to see a faster rate of progress in diversifying the student population because they're not as many women in our undergraduate program as well as the graduate program. So, I really wanted to see that pace of increase accelerate, because I think it's important if we're innovating technologies that people depend on, society depends on, and society comprises more than half of women, I think it's important that the people who are designing and building these devices, systems, processes, include a reasonable representation of women. So, I thought that was important. That's why I stepped up to serve as department chair.  

And more recently, 5-6 years ago, I chose to step up as Dean of Engineering primarily because I wanted to transform the culture of engineering to make it more welcoming and inclusive for all people. We are seeing increased percentages of women in the College of Engineering across all of the engineering sub-fields, but we want to make sure that all these students feel like they're really supported to thrive here, rather than just to survive our rigorous curriculum. The more successful our students are, no matter if they're male, female, or from various races and ethnicities, no matter where what background and lived experiences they have, they should all have a chance to reach their full potential and thrive here in school. So, I thought that was important, so that's why I stepped up as Dean. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah, that's really inspiring. So, was there a specific moment in your career that really, like, motivated you? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Well, just knowing that my work has an impact. That's what inspires me and keeps me going. Of course, the outstanding students, outstanding professors, and staff colleagues here to work with; we enjoy solving problems together, and coming up with new ideas and innovations that really can make a positive change in the world. I work in semiconductor devices and technology, and these microchips are used in all electronic smart electronic devices today; we rely on them to communicate, to collect information, and to process information. Without electronic communication and computing devices, society would be quite different today, so we can see the transformative impact that technology has had on people. And so that's inspiring to me and to the students and my colleagues here. What we make, what we're doing, actually makes a big difference, hopefully a positive difference, to people in society. That's what we want. We're all about innovation for the benefit of humanity. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah, that's really cool. So, if any, what kind of adversities have you faced because of your gender? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

I wouldn't say I've faced any adversaries, but yes, certainly there might have been some barriers because, at least decades ago when I was a student, people didn't envision that women were naturally engineers. So, I did feel, as a student, more isolated in my engineering classes. But that's exactly the kind of thing that I want to eliminate today. In my current position, women should feel like they belong and that they're included in the engineering, math, physics, and chemistry classes, and that they are valued as collaborators in research. So, I didn't really have adversaries.  

In fact, I had people who were supporting me. Like I said, my husband encouraged me to pursue a PhD, I had very patient and supportive research advisors at Stanford, and a lot of outstanding colleagues to collaborate with here at Berkeley. But I think a lot of it is more societal, you know, stereotypes in the back of your mind. Maybe this is not the right field for me. I mean, that's the kind of barrier that I think people who are underrepresented in a field might experience, and those are the things that we would like to work to eliminate so that there's no impediment to success for people. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah, I totally agree. Like even though it's a lot better today, even in my computer science class at my high school, there's only like 4 girls in a class of 30. So, it's kind of like challenging. 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Yeah, it helps to know you're not alone, because looking back, I don't recall that there were any other female students in my engineering classes, but I think it's quite different today. Certainly, Berkeley is quite different. Some progress has been made, but certainly from what you describe, we definitely need to make more progress. It would be helpful to try to understand the root causes. Why are there relatively small percentage of female students in computer science classes? If we can figure out why, then maybe we can address the root causes.  

There might be things that discourage women from persisting in computer science, so it's good to get at the root and to identify the cause of the so-called problem, and then see if we can address those root causes. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah, I agree. I know that you talked a little bit about how your husband inspired you, but were there any specific people or like mentors that made an impact on you? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Sure, I've been very fortunate in my life to have a lot of people that set higher expectations for me than I set for myself. So, it helps to surround yourself with people who want to see you succeed, right? So it's of course, starting at home with my parents, who set high expectations for me, my husband, who inspired me to continue even though I was kind of discouraged during part of my PhD study, colleagues at Berkeley to apply for certain research grants to pursue my ideas, and collaborated with me and gave me opportunities to lead projects, lead a department, lead a lab. So, I think I've been very fortunate to have all these opportunities.  

But I'll say that looking back, it’s important to be introspective, right? Each of us, as we sort of plan our educational pathway and our career pathway, we should reflect on ourselves. Like what inspires us, where is our passion? What are we most interested in, what do we enjoy doing? And yeah, because just pursuing a career in engineering can be challenging. So, there are times when we have to overcome barriers and persist. And if you're not interested, if you have no passion for this work then it's unlikely that you'll achieve your full potential. So, I think it's important for every one of us to understand what motivates us, what inspires us? What kinds of knowledge and skills have we developed, or are we interested in developing, and how do those match with our chosen educational and career pathways?  

So, that's one thing, the other thing is to show that you're not in it just for yourself. Like engineering is quite a collaborative profession; we have to solve pretty complex problems today, working in teams. And if you don't enjoy working with other people, then it's hard for other people to collaborate with you productively and also to support, help, and encourage you to succeed. So, a lot of the help that we might get from others is because we also inspire others to help us. Does that make sense? Because they know that somehow it will benefit them or benefit the greater good. So, that's also an important consideration. I think it's not wise to just go out and say, “OK, who can help me? Like can you do this for me? Can you do that?” Like, why would somebody want to help you? What is it that you can do to help others? How can you inspire other people to want to see you succeed? So, that's an important thing to keep in mind as well. That comes back to understanding yourself. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah, that's really insightful. I think that's a great perspective to have. So, what do you perceive to be the largest barrier to female leadership? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

I think it's still stereotypes in in society. This is the way our brains are wired literally because we learn as we experience things in life. And our brains are wired to actually react more strongly when something is different, right? So, let's say I suddenly turn off the light. That will catch somebody's attention more so than if you just continue like this. It's because something has changed. But then, if you're in the dark, then your eyes will naturally adapt; they'll just become more sensitive. So, then our brains essentially adapt to the conditions. If you grow up in an environment where you see mostly men or only men in certain careers or professions, then it's a natural thing. If you encounter a woman in that profession, something inside you will kind of say, “Oh, this feels different.” It'll just trigger something in your brain, and that can lead to unconscious or conscious bias. It could be conscious bias, like outright discrimination. Unconscious bias would be more like, “I'm not as comfortable talking with this person, so I'll just go talk to the man who's in this profession.” So, it can trigger a degree of discomfort. That's the implicit bias that can serve to discourage, ignore, or devalue women in roles that are traditionally dominated by men.  

So, I think the key to solving this is just to realize that this is the way people are. This is like a survival instinct. You know, you want to be alerted when something's different, because it could be a danger to you. But in the workplace, we need to understand that this is the way brains are wired. But we should be aware and try to make sure that we don't allow that to cause us to make snap judgments or rush to decisions that are not objective. It's more like just innate natural reaction. So, I think that's the biggest barrier, stereotypes that lead to implicit bias. 

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Anya Sun 

OK, so I know that you talked about how you were promoting diversity in your leadership position, but why do you think that diversity is important, and in particular gender diversity? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Yeah. So, engineers, you know, what we do is design. We essentially come up with solutions to problems that are facing people or society, and by solving problems, we benefit people in society. So, if the engineering teams that develop the solutions are not truly considering all members of society, you can come up with engineering solutions that are actually not beneficial to all members of society, and in fact, can be harmful. So, there are many examples of this.  

A common example that I cite is the airbag systems in cars. So, all automobiles today are required to have some airbag system where if the car suddenly changes in speed, then airbags will deploy and cushion somebody from hitting their head or their body hitting the dashboard or going through the window. So, the very first airbag systems deployed in the early 1990s were actually tested with crash test dummies. But the crash test dummies were sized and weighted like adult Caucasian males. So, the airbag systems worked just fine for adult Caucasian males of average height, weight, and strength. But it took years of data for people to realize, “OK, a lot of women are getting injured or even killed because of the airbag is designed to deploy and prevent a taller man from being injured.” You can imagine for a woman, the airbag would often hit their face, and women have weaker necks than men on average, so it could actually kill somebody.  

The data showed that on average, women and children were injured or even suffered deaths more, and it took 20 years before the government, the Department of Transportation, mandated that car manufacturers had to also use crash test dummies sized and weighted to represent other types of people in society to solve this problem. So that's an example of lives being dramatically affected by systems that were designed by engineers to benefit people, but they didn't benefit all people. In fact, they hurt some segments of society and it's very clear that this is because, the engineering teams didn't somehow think, “Oh, women might be different.” People have different body types and shapes and sizes. Like, why wouldn't you test your airbag system with the dummies that are representative of people in society?

 

Anya Sun 

Yeah, I think that's really important. So, what traits do you have that help you deal with the adversity of being a woman in a male dominated field? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Well, I think it helps to be empathetic. If you want to be as successful as an engineer, you want to have empathy. You want to have empathy for your team members, so you kind of understand where they're coming from, and try to understand their ideas, because you want to collect the best ideas to come up with the best solution for the problem that you're trying to solve. So, it's good to have empathy, so you show appreciation for everybody's contributions. You want to show that you actually value and respect them, so that's important to work effectively as a team member, but also to have empathy for the customer.  

Like you're designing a device, or a system, or process for people to use. So, we have to think, “OK, different types of people will be using this. What features or what aspects would they care about most?” So, I think empathy is important for making sure that you're a successful engineer. The more successful you are as a team member, as a leader, the easier it will be for others to value and respect you, no matter if they're male or female.  

I think the key is not to be perceived as a threat, or a competitor with others. You want to show that you collaborate and that you care about something beyond yourself. If it's obvious to everybody that you’re just looking out for yourself and you're in it for yourself, that's not the best way to get people to be supportive or eager to work with you and give you a lot of respect. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah, I agree I think that empathy is really important. So, how do you suggest someone cultivate these traits? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

So, empathy is one. Another one is always being willing to learn new things because the world's changing, new technologies come out, and you want to adapt and use them like AI, ChatGPT. So, you have to be a good learner and also be adaptive. So, as things change, you want to adapt to the change, so that's also key. That means adapting to the different strengths of different team members. You'll generally not work with the same exact team all through your career. You'll be changing teammates and as you change projects so continually being able to learn new things and being adaptive is important.  

Also, communication skills. If you can't communicate your ideas clearly, then how do you expect other people to understand and be able to do something with that input? Also, communication involves listening. So, listen to make sure you understand other people's ideas or feedback. That includes taking constructive feedback so that you can improve on your own ideas. So those are the three things if you want to be as successful as an engineering leader. Empathy, ability to learn and adapt, and good communication skills, which includes excellent listening skills.  

So, how do you cultivate that practice? I think the good thing here is that I think pretty much any person can continually improve their empathy, and their learning ability, and the ability to communicate. It's just a matter of recognizing and prioritizing that in your educational journey or your career journey. 

So, there are always opportunities to practice, to try to see other people's point of view. I view it as a challenge, like there's some people who are more difficult to work with than others. So, challenge yourself; say, “Hey, is there something I can do to really bring out the best in this person?” That's what I personally enjoy doing. I derive satisfaction from bringing out the best in others. Because if you bring out the best in others, they'll contribute to the team, and you'll have a more successful team. They'll be happy. You'll be happy like everybody wins. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah. And then for our final question, what advice would you give to other women who want to enter engineering? 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

I think engineering is really a rewarding field of study. Not to say that every person should become an engineer, but I think most people can benefit from an engineering education because we teach you critical thinking skills, analytical skills, and teamwork.  

So, first of all, don't think that you should only study engineering if you want to become an engineer. A lot of engineering grads go on to medical school, business school, they work in finance, and they become entrepreneurs as well. Pretty much an engineering education can prepare you for any kind of career, and I think more of our country's leaders should really have a better understanding of technology because they're developing legislation to regulate the usage or the development of new technologies that could benefit people in society. So that's the first message. Engineering is a great field of study. It can open up a lot of opportunities for you and you should feel that there's a place for you here.  

And 2nd is in order to prepare yourself to succeed as much as possible in engineering, we want to make sure that you have good mathematical skills. So, take advantage of all the math classes, tutoring, and other opportunities to learn and apply math. If you have strong math skills and you're comfortable using math, that will make engineering easier. It's not going to be impossible if you're not good at math, but I think it just would definitely make it easier. So, I would say don't let anybody discourage you from learning math and you know, practice. Math is one of those things that as you practice, you'll get better at it. So, anybody that says math is too hard or not for girls, you should ignore them because we know that the brain is plastic. In other words, we can continually learn. Just because you're not good at math today does not mean that you are never going to be good at math. Just like anything in life, it takes some practice. Some things take more practice than others, right? I mean, in sports, people practice pretty hard to really improve their skills. It would be the same way with learning new things like math. 

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Anya Sun 

Yeah. So that's all the time that we have for today and like, thank you so much for meeting with me. 

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Dr. Tsu-Jae Liu 

Very welcome. I wish you all the best in your journey and hopefully that will involve engineering. 

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