Lillian Anderson is the 2020 recipient of the Helen Grenga Outstanding Woman Engineer Award, which is chosen by the Women in Engineering (WIE) program at Georgia Tech. This award is usually presented at the WIE Awards Banquet each spring, and it is presented to a female engineering student who has demonstrated outstanding scholarship, leadership, and service in her field and in the Georgia Tech community. 

Anderson is enrolled in the B.S./M.S. program in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), where she graduated with her B.S.E.E. degree this past spring. For three semesters, Anderson was a quality control and test co-op at the Electronic Systems Laboratory in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), where she fully automated four tests associated with an electronic warfare countermeasure system. Anderson also created a test document without being given design requirements. In both instances, she saved engineers valuable time and helped her team meet customer expectations. For her excellent work in GTRI, Anderson received the 2020 Most Outstanding ECE Senior Co-op Award. 

Anderson has been deeply committed to enrolling more female students in ECE and creating a friendly and supportive community for them through Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering (WECE). She served as its freshman liaison, vice president, and president. Anderson represented WECE to the ECE Advisory Board and other groups; hosted luncheons, social events, and social mixers; recruited WECE members to volunteer at the annual FIRST LEGO League State Championship; selected scholarship winners among prospective female ECE students; and promoted participation in the annual Georgia Tech Women’s Leadership Conference.  Anderson also served her fellow students as an undergraduate teaching assistant for ECE 2031 Digital Design Laboratory and was a team leader for ECE students in GT 1000 First Year Seminar. 

Dedicated to promoting cultural diversity, Anderson was a volunteer English language tutor for international students at the Language Café, a weekly social hosted by the Georgia Tech Language Institute. She was also an international student vision team leader for the Georgia Tech Baptist Collegiate Ministry and was a volunteer Latin teaching assistant and tutor with Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School. She took part in a summertime humanitarian trip to Ethiopia and participated in study abroad programs at Georgia Tech Lorraine and Georgia Tech Shenzhen. 

Anderson will come back to Georgia Tech in the fall to pursue the M.S.E.C.E. portion of the joint B.S./M.S. degree program. After graduation, she hopes to pursue technical project management. 

“I appreciate how Georgia Tech has given me an excellent technical foundation, international experience, and opportunities to develop leadership skills,” Anderson said. “My classmates and professors are caring, driven, and passionate people, who have supported me through my college career, shaping the way I view the world. Go Jackets!"