For the first time in Stanford’s history, a female Ph.D. student was questioned by an all-female examination committee in the School of Engineering last Wednesday in Wallenberg Hall.

Three out of 54 faculty are women in the Computer Science Department; four out of 67 in the Electrical Engineering Department; and seven out of 33 women in the Management Science and Engineering Department.

Assistant Energy Resources Engineering Prof. Margot Gerritsen, one of the five examination committee members, was the research advisor for student Shalini Krishnamurthy, a graduate student in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering.

“Of the past 1,000 Ph.D.s in the last four years, so few have been women, let alone been questioned by all women,” Gerritsen said. “It just shows you that we are finally getting to a state where we can get enough females to do this.”

Gerritsen said, however, that the all-female committee was not planned.

“It wasn’t by design that the entire committee ended up being comprised of all females,” she said. “All of the people we wanted who specialized in Shalini’s line of work just turned out to be women.”

Krishnamurthy’s work focused on computational methods for gas injection processes for enhanced oil recovery in petroleum engineering as well as CO2 sequestration.

“The examination was fantastic,” Gerritsen said. “Shalini is a very good student, so it was wonderful.”

Krishnamurthy said she was excited for the opportunity to defend her work in such an unprecedented event.

“Having all these who people who achieved so much on the committee is inspiring,” she said. “I really felt more thrilled defending that day in front of all those women because I realized such a thing had never happened before.”

Gerritsen added that the event was a milestone for female scholarship in science.

“A lot of women who work here only see men around them,” she said. “So it is empowering to see women accomplishing something like this. For Shalini, I think there was a sense of pride being a woman herself, and having also reached a Ph.D. level in a male-dominated environment that made it even more special.”

Krishnamurthy agreed and said that she was proud of her achievements thus far.

“I come from India, and this is the first generation where women have made such a leap in the professional stream,” Kirshnamurthy said. “I am the first Ph.D student in my family, and I feel great that I have come so far.”

Gerritsen said that the School of Engineering is actively trying to diversify its students and faculty.

“There is a strong push by the School of Engineering and School of Sciences to actively search for minority applicants, including women,” she said. “And I think this effort is paying off.”

Gerritsen added that she was optimistic that engineering disciplines would continue to build their appeal to female scholars but said that more advances still needed to be made.

“I think there is an incredible awareness that it is very hard for women to reach these positions,” she said. “It really is a milestone event that should be recognized, and also a stark reminder of how far we still have to go.”