The official biography below was current at the time of the award. Awardees may choose to provide their latest biographical information on their profile page.

Dr. Alice Agogino derives her motivation to mentor from her own personal experiences as the only undergraduate woman in mechanical engineering at the University of New Mexico. As a mentor to hundreds of students and numerous junior faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, Agogino is internationally recognized for her contributions to both mentoring and cutting-edge mechanical engineering research and education.

Agogino's mentoring philosophy draws heavily on the Quality Education for Minorities Network definition of mentoring as an organic, two-way developmental relationship that involves leading, guiding, keeping interest alive, supporting, counseling, coaching, demonstrating, and challenging within a relationship of mutual trust and respect. Her operational strategy includes tiered mentoring through which her senior doctoral students mentor M.S. and undergraduate-level students. Together, they foster a robust learning and research network, along with embedding a culture of mentorship at the university.

To elevate the talent of students from underrepresented groups, Agogino utilizes a strategy she calls "designing for diversity," which helps her mentees tackle research problems that are both important to the human condition and that appeal differentially to women and ethnic minority students, motivating them to engage and persist in engineering. Through a NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award, Dr. Agogino developed a course series on her approach, for which she won the 2010 Chancellor's Award for Community Service. "Designing for diversity," she says, "helps students find their own engineering pathway to success in their profession with positive social impact." Outside of the university setting, Dr. Agogino has forged collaborations with local schools, museums, and community organizations to tailor engineering experiences to K-12 students and inspire their interest in STEM fields.

Dr. Agogino is a prolific mentor. She has graduated 41 doctoral students and 130 M.S. students in engineering, nearly half of them from underrepresented groups. She has also advised over 500 undergraduate students, all but one of them successfully completing the baccalaureate in engineering. Her efforts have helped double the percentage of women undergraduates in mechanical engineering in the last five years at UC Berkeley. She employs a parity rule on her mentoring for junior faculty, seeking out at least one  underrepresented candidate for each majority candidate. Dr. Ryan Shelby, a former mentee of Dr. Agogino and now energy engineering advisor to USAID, calls her " ... an ardent guardian and supporter of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts designed to increase the number of highly qualified women, first-generation college, and underrepresented minority students graduating with advanced degrees."

With an equally fruitful publication record (over 250 peer-reviewed papers), Agogino has won six best paper awards on her disciplinary research and four best paper awards on engineering education. Among her extensive awards and recognitions, she is a recipient of the 2012 AAAS Lifetime Mentoring Award, with the citation reading: "For efforts to significantly increase the number of women and African- and Hispanic-American doctorates in mechanical engineering."