Laura Bottomley

Laura Bottomley, an electrical engineer, serves as the Director of The Engineering Place for K-20 Engineering and oversees the Women in Engineering and K-12 Outreach Programs for the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University. Her work in The Engineering Place involves conducting research on effective professional development for K-12 engineering education, teaching and learning of engineering in K-20 education, and mechanisms for integrated STEM teaching and learning in both formal and informal classrooms.

Bottomley is also a co-author of engineering guidelines for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Her role extends to delivering professional development workshops for in-service teachers and principals in K-12, reaching approximately 3000 teachers in the 2012-2013 academic year. Beyond facilitating workshops, Bottomley also imparts engineering-based integrated STEM lessons in K-12 classrooms and supervises engineering summer camps and other outreach activities for grades K-12. Further enriching her extensive involvement in STEM education, Bottomley is a Teaching Associate Professor in Elementary Education and in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She has designed and taught a required engineering class for elementary education majors, the Introduction to Engineering class for first-year engineering students, and additional electrical engineering courses.

In recognition of her commendable contributions to STEM education, Bottomley was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2016. She is also a Fellow of the American Society of Engineering Education. In addition, she was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring in 2007. Demonstrating her wide-reaching influence, Bottomley was featured in a Super Bowl commercial titled "Doing Good with STEM" in 2016. A senior member of IEEE, a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education, a faculty advisor for the Society of Women Engineers at NC State, and a member of the steering committee for the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) assessment in technological literacy, Bottomley continues to inspire and empower students and educators in the STEM field.

Bottomley acquired her B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1984 and 1985, respectively. After spending two years at AT&T Bell Laboratories, she went on to pursue her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at NC State. She has also taught at Duke University and consulted with several firms, including Lockheed Martin, IBM, and MCNC, before originating her current position in the Office of Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering at NC State.